When a Muslim woman eloped with a Hindu man in Bareilly last week, the police saw no love jihad or yuddh, deciding that as consenting adults they had the right to live together.
But in several recent instances where the men were Muslim and the women Hindu, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested the men or their relatives under a new state ordinance that criminalises religious conversion for marriage and became law on November 27.
While the ordinance is not religion-specific in its phrasing, BJP leaders have made it clear that it’s aimed at checking “love jihad” – an alleged conspiracy by Muslim men to marry, convert and radicalise Hindu women. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath had been among the first to allege such a conspiracy.