At least 34 persons have been arrested, say police in various districts
With fresh cases in Shahjahanpur and Kannauj, the number of FIRs lodged under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020 has reached 11.
The ordinance was promulgated on November 27 and since then, it has been invoked roughly once in 48 hours. At least 34 persons have been arrested so far, the police in various districts said.
Along with those in Shahjahanpur and Kannauj, the police have lodged cases under the new ordinance in Gautam Buddha Nagar, Mau, Bijnor, Hardoi, Sitapur, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad, Bareilly and Etah.
In Kannauj, a case was lodged under Sections 3 and 5 of the ordinance in Gurusahaiganj against a Muslim man in his thirties for marrying a Hindu girl, aged 26, allegedly through a fraudulent Hindu identity. Ajay Verma, the brother of the girl, said the man named Taufeeq was going by a fake name of Rahul Verma. “When we asked about his family, he said h