Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that will speak to the director general of police (DGP) to create a standard operation procedure (SOP) for police stations on love jihad cases. He said that the state is studying love jihad laws in other states to assess the applicability of the same in Maharashtra, as per a report in the Times of India.
“To sensitize police stations to deal with such cases, an SOP needs to be formed. If timely action is taken, tensions within the communities can be avoided,” Fadnavis said. He also added that action will be taken against policemen involved if timely action is not taken in cases of love jihad.
On 2nd July, the deputy CM had also said that psychological help would be provided by the state to the victims of love jihad. In June, Fadnavis said that investigations into missing person complaints had led to the unearthing of a large number of Love Jihad cases in the state.
During a media interaction in Mumbai in June, Fadnavis said that his government is sensitive about the missing person complaints adding that “the detection rate in such cases was 90 to 95 percent in the state. Still, I agree that more efforts are required to stop the exploitation of innocent girls.”
The Maharashtra Home Minister had further stated that there is nothing objectionable in interfaith marriages, however, many cases have surfaced wherein women have been misled and lured with false promises by either married men or those belonging to the ‘other’ faith and subjected to love jihad. He also reiterated his government’s commitment to tackle the surging cases of love jihad and exploitation of women in the state.
In March this year, during the budget session, Devendra Fadnavis said that the Maharashtra government is studying the laws introduced by various states in this respect. He had said back then that information would be gathered from the various states that had already passed anti-conversion laws.
Notably, many BJP-led governments, including Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand and Haryana, have constituted laws against ‘Love Jihad’ in their respective states to tackle the problem of forced and illegal conversions of Hindus at the hands of their Muslim partners.