Despite stringent laws having been enacted to tackle the menace, cases of purported grooming jihad keep emerging in the state of Uttar Pradesh. In one such recent case, the Etah city police in Uttar Pradesh have arrested a youth named Shoaib Irshad for allegedly trapping a Hindu girl by posing as a Hindu boy and later abducting and forcing her to convert to Islam, reports Hindi daily Amar Ujala.
The family of the victim had filed a missing complaint on December 7, based on which the Etah police initiated an investigation and arrested the youth in a kidnapping case and sent him to jail. The girl was recovered and handed over to her family members.
The victim came in contact with Irshad through a social media account, where he had introduced himself as Shiva. The first-year BSc student went missing after Irshad allured her to run away with him on December 6.
But after the girl was rescued it turned out to be a case of purported grooming jihad where the victim was kidnapped and later forced to convert her religion.
The police revealed that the girl was taken to Moradabad where the accused pressurized her to convert to Islam as a pre-condition to marry her.
The mother of the victim told the police that her daughter, who was a first-year student pursuing BSc, had as usual left for her college on December 6, but when she did not return home until late in the evening, they started searching but could not trace her. On December 7, the victim’s family approached the Kotwali police in Etah, Uttar Pradesh to lodge a missing complaint.
She added that they searched through their daughter’s social media accounts and found out that she had been regularly chatting with a youth named Shiva, a resident of Moradabad on Facebook. The girl’s relatives went to Moradabad to inquire about the youth. On investigating, the victim’s kin found out that the youth had faked his identity to befriend the victim and that his real name was Shoaib Irshad, a resident of Bilari town in the Moradabad district in Uttar Pradesh.
The mother alleged that the youth wanted to convert the daughter and marry her. He brainwashed the daughter for conversion.
Speaking about the case, Etah SSP Uday Shankar Singh said that the police had arrested the youth and rescued the victim. She would be soon presented before the magistrate to record her statement, said the SSP.
