A 25-year-old Dalit man who had embraced Christianity, Bobbili Bhaskar, has alleged that his girlfriend’s family made him convert to Islam, undergo circumcision and changed dietary habits only to have his marriage proposal turned down by girl’s father. A resident of the Vikarabad district of Telangana, Bhaskar, now known as Mohammad Ahmed Hunain, has approached the State Human Rights Commission complaining about the girl’s family.

In a letter to the State Human Rights Commission dated 18 January 2020, Bhaskar has appealed to question the girl in its presence, and direct the police to lodge a first information report (FIR) against her family. The letter says that the station house officer (SHO) of Vikarabad police station isn’t taking any action against Nikhath Sultana (his girlfriend), her father Saleemuddin, and three men who beat him up, namely Asif, Siraj and Lateef.

It further said that after Bhaskar and Nikhath, who knew each other for the last 11 years, turned major, Bhaskar approached her father. He accepted the relationship but asked Bhaskar to convert to Islam. When Bhaskar approached her family for the wedding after his conversion and fulfilling all the pre-set conditions, they “behaved with me as (if) I am a stranger to them and don’t know them”, wrote Bhaskar in the letter to the Human Rights Commission.

Bhaskar approached some elders in the Muslim community for intervention. They asked the two parties to meet them together for an amicable solution, but the girl’s parents did not turn up. Three men from her family also thrashed him in a public park, the letter says.

According to a report by Swarajya Magazine, Bhaskar, went on to obtain a religious conversion certificate from a local Muslim organisation. He then underwent the circumcision.

The conversion certificate, dated 10 June 2019, was issued by one ‘Muslim Welfare Association Tandur’ (Tandur is an area in Vikarabad). It mentions Bhaskar’s “Islamic name” as Mohammed Abdul Hunain.

Speaking to Swarajya, Bhaskar divulged that the circumcision was carried out by a Muslim surgeon in a Vikarabad-based hospital. He told that he regretted the decision as it has left him in perpetual pain and trauma.

“It was traumatising. It still hurts,” said Bhaskar who asserts that he would have never taken this step had this not been a precondition set by the girl’s family.

The atrocities, however, did not stop at this. The girl’s family further demanded that Bhaskar, who was a strict vegetarian should now become a regular meat-eater. In hope to get married to his lover, Bhaskar, from a Church-goer, readily became a five-time namaazi.

So committed Bhaskar was to win over his girlfriend’s family that he would shoot videos of him reciting Islamic prayers and send them to her family, divulged the devastated man to Swarjya.

However, four months after his conversion when Bhaskar approached the girl’s father, the later refused to even recognise him. Though Bhaskar gave ample proof that he had been religiously observing the Muslim way of life, he could not convince the girl’s father for getting the two married.

Bhaskar kept persuading him for weeks, but the father continued to be unresponsive towards him, he says. Three men from their family beat him up when he tried to get the community involved. Bhaskar approached the local police, but the cops refused to intervene, he says.

Left with no other option, Bhaskar has now approached the State Human Rights Commission.