Throughout the world most pre-meditated murders are committed by those known to the victims. Spontaneous murders under “crimes of passion” are between people known to each other. Other cases of murder happen when there is a botched robbery or in a panic situation where a cop tries to stop a criminal; like a smuggler or mining mafia crook. Then there are blood-thirsty types who kill just for fun or because of a mental problem, like serial killers who hunt for their prey at random. All Love Jihad (LJ) crimes and murders are by those who know their victims.
One of the most brutal and gruesome murders in recent times was that of 15-year old Ankita Singh at Dumka in Jharkhand in August 2022. Her stalker, Shahruk, poured petrol on her through a window while she was sleeping and burned her alive with an accomplice called Naeem. At first, a Muslim officer of the PS tried to pass her off as a 19-year old to dilute the case against her killers. Shahruk was not a stranger to Ankita. She had known him but later spurned him after knowing a bit more about him. He kept stalking her and finally burned her to death when she refused to surrender to his attempts at entrapping her. In 2020, Nikita Tomar, a young college student, was brazenly shot dead outside her college in full public view by a Muslim guy called Tausif who demanded she marry him and convert to Islam. The brazen willingness to murder someone who doesn’t fall for your lust also constitutes Love Jihad:
A few days ago, a little movie starlet called Tunisha Sharma committed suicide according to media reports. She committed suicide on the sets where she was working in the room of her ex-boyfriend Sheezan Khan who had broken up with her some days earlier. Tunisha’s family claims foul play and that she didn’t commit suicide. It seems to me that Bollywood and the TV industry surrounding it actively encourages Hindu girls to engage in relationships with Muslim guys. This appears to be a passport to continued work and success in the filthy industry. Almost every top Bollywood Muslim actor either has a Hindu girlfriend or is married to a Hindu woman. They don’t seem to find Muslim women suitable or attractive to their lifestyle. And as soon as Tunisha’s death was reported, a BJP minister termed it LJ and promptly demanded that the Maharashtra govt pass a stringent anti-LJ law:
Girish Mahajan is not the first one to demand a law against LJ. Almost all BJP states have demanded and passed some kind of LJ law but they are largely deceptive and a white-wash without even defining LJ as a crime. Obviously, defining LJ as a crime would mean mentioning Hindu-Muslim as the focus which politicians wouldn’t dare. Among the first to recognise the LJ crime was none other than the Kerala HC way back in 2009. The court mentioned “Under pretext of love there cannot be any compulsive, deceptive conversion”. But that is the very purpose of Love Jihad:
Therefore, it is important to define what Love Jihad is. None of the laws made to combat this menace actually mentions the term LJ nor defines what LJ is. The laws that were made were essentially “anti-conversion” laws addressing conversion by entrapment, inducement or force. The laws do not address the fact that LJ is basically an assault on Hindu girls and women nor recognise the fact that it’s an organized menace by Muslim youths. In some cases, it is a minor modification of the earlier anti-conversion law or more mumbo-jumbo in legal nonsense without addressing the problem of Love Jihad. Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka (all BJP states) have passed such a law which is nothing but a FARCE which doesn’t really address the problem of LJ:
Because these laws are general in nature the Dalits in Karnataka opposed the Bill because it curbs their freedoms to convert to Buddhism or any other religion without following certain legal procedures. In a recent episode, there was mass-conversion of Dalits to Buddhists in Delhi because Delhi doesn’t have any religious conversion law that mandates certain legal procedures like the conversion having to be done with an affidavit or sworn statement in front of a Magistrate.
Last year, a report from Gujarat claimed the first arrest under the new modified anti-conversion law. The case has all the ingredients of Love-Jihad but the only omission the report makes is the utter foolishness of the woman involved in the aborted relationship. First, read this report and then we will try to understand how it unveils the ingredients:
The woman is obviously Hindu or non-Muslim. The man fakes his religious identity as a Christian. He took her to various religious places, promised her a good life and then blackmailed her with intimate photos to marry and convert to Islam. There is just one jarring note – why would a woman go along with a man after the first incident of rape as she claims? She claims she was raped FOUR times. Is the first rape not enough to dump a man or at least not meet him in private places? Is she that dumb to go along with the man even after meeting his family who would have given all signs of being Muslims? Is she that dumb that she waited to be raped FOUR times to realise she is being conned?
So, technically and legally, what case would the police take to a court? It would only be case of entrapment and rape and the accused would predictably argue that since they had an ongoing relationship, the sex was consensual and not rape. Consequently, the only possible case against the Muslim man would be that of an imposter pretending to be a Christian to lure the woman and/or blackmail with the photos. But since she didn’t complain till the fourth rape even the charges of entrapment or luring would fall flat. We don’t know what happened to that case yet. Time will tell.
Therefore, what exactly is Love Jihad? In the current circumstances in India, LJ is a deliberate plot and act by some Muslim men to target Hindu girls and women for lust, sex, marriage to birth babies and then convert to Islam. Non-compliance means either be dumped or killed. The term non-compliance also means the woman spurns the seduction which results in murder as with Ankita Singh and Nikita Tomar. So, the woman can be killed for non-compliance and also for complying with and falling for the seduction as in the case of Shraddha Walkar. The reason I specifically say “Muslim men” is because of the word Jihad which is associated only with Islam and not with Christianity or Buddhism. Love Jihad also involves the man faking himself to be a Hindu with a Hindu name to lure the woman and seduce her into a dream of good life.
None of the laws made so far use the term “Love Jihad” or address the “organized” plotting of the whole act of LJ targeting Hindu women. They are just plain illegal-conversion laws. These laws do not address cases like those of Ankita or Nikita where there was no marriage and no conversion involved. Such cases will remain regular murder cases and nothing more. Most importantly, none of these laws state a woman (usually Hindu woman) as the target of the LJ offence. Under current laws even a man can be targeted for forced conversion with threat to life. That is a serious flaw and that is why LJ continues to be a menace. Thus, a new law that specifies and uses the term LJ or “Love entrapment” for seduction by fake representation of religion, fake name, inducement, entrapment, blackmail followed by forced conversion, threat to life and/or murder has to be enacted. Since the Constitution will not allow Muslims to be specified as the usual suspects, the law has to mention a person of one religion faking identity to entrap a woman. And LJ has to be specifically recognized as a crime against a woman and not as a general forced conversion crime. The cartoon depicts stages of entrapment and stupidity of the Hindu woman quite appropriately.
Take the case of a woman named Uma Sharma from Mumbai. She was married to a Muslim and also converted to Islam and changed her name. She reportedly also had children with her husband Wasim. She was murdered for not agreeing to wear the hijab or burqa as demanded by Wasi Ahmed. She was buried in the bedroom of their house. This is not a case of LJ. Technically and legally, this is a plain case of murder and no other offence can be invoked under Indian laws:
While demanding more stringent laws is one thing, Hindu women should also learn and understand the risks they are running. By all the accounts we see in the media, most of the LJ victims are from a lower middle-class section. There are just a few cases from middle and upper class and hardly any case from rich families. It is hard to say what drives such women to fall for potential killers. But where the laws are concerned, all the laws made so far to combat this menace are a sham, a farce and do not address the problem at all.
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