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Allahabad High Court Dismissed the plea of a Couple who asked for Police Protection, saying Religious Conversion for the Sake of Marriage is Unacceptable.
The Allahabad High Court, in its latest judgment, has dismissed the writ petition of an interfaith marriage couple who asked for police protection. The CourtCourt stated that the girl, who was a Muslim by birth, had converted to Hinduism a month before her marriage.
A single-judge bench of Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi said that the girl's conversion from the faith she was following by birth to the faith her husband was born shows that all this was done for the sake of marriage. The judge gave a reference to the case Noor Jahan Begum @Anjali Mishra & Anr. v. State of U.P. & Ors(2014), in which it was observed that conversion for the sole purpose of marriage could not be accepted.
The CourtCourt rejected the petition saying that it cannot be entertained under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.
In the case of Noor Jahan Begum, the girls who were of the Hindu religion converted into Islam and tied the knot with Muslim boys in an Islamic wedding ceremony of Nikah. Both the couples filed a batch of writ petitions before the Allahabad High Court asking for police protection. The issue was whether the conversion of a Hindu girl only for getting married to a Muslim boy that too when she doesn't know anything about Islam, can be considered valid? The High Court dismissed the petitions stating them as invalid.
The CourtCourt also referred to the Supreme Court's decision in Lily Thomas vs. Union of India, in which the CourtCourt observed:
"conversion of a person to Islam can only be considered bona fide if he/ she is of sound mind and major and is ready to embrace Islam by his/ her free consent and the faith which he/she holds in Allah or Prophet Muhammad. If the conversion is only to claim rights or to avoid marriage or achieve some selfish motive and nothing inspired by religious feelings, the conversion can't be said as a bona fide. Conversion is valid only if it involves honesty and heart to accept the new religion and leaving behind the original religion."
The Allahabad High Court on these points dismissed the plea of the married couple.
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