Gurugram: A case of alleged ‘Love Jihad’ has surfaced in Gurugram, Haryana, where a Muslim man, father of three children, befriended a Hindu woman and married her, posing as a Hindu, before attempting to convert her.
Two persons were arrested in this connection on Wednesday, as reported by PTI.
The prime accused has been identified as Arif Khan (35), a married man with three children. He posed as Aarav to trap the Hindu woman into a relationship and then marriage.
An elaborate conspiracy has emerged after the police began investigating the matter.
According to the FIR, the 24-year-old woman from Bihar was working at a car showroom in Gurugram in 2022 when she got in touch with Arif through Tarif Khan, who also worked in the same company.
Arif introduced himself to the woman as Aarav and said he was unmarried. He also told the woman that he does not have a father, his mother suffers from a mental illness and his brothers do not care about the family, the police said.
The woman got married to the accused at a temple here in accordance with Hindu customs, the FIR states.
When the woman became pregnant in 2023, Arif started pressuring her to abort the child and even threatened to make her private videos viral, but as the pregnancy was six months old, the child could not be aborted.
The accused got the woman admitted to a private hospital in Gurugram and left. The woman gave birth to a boy on August 11, 2023, the police said.
“A few months later, Tarif Khan told me that Aarav’s real name is Arif Khan, he is married and has three children. He took me to his home in Dhunela village, near Sohna, where Arif, his mother, wife and brothers named me Ziya Khan and started pressuring me to convert,” the woman said.
“I was beaten up and threatened with death…. Somehow, I managed to escape to Bihar, but the accused also reached there. I returned to Gurugram after leaving my child with my parents in Bihar. Late in the evening of January 26, the accused forcibly entered my rented accommodation, beat me up and pressured me to convert. After this, with the help of two social workers, I approached the police,” she said in her complaint.
The FIR was lodged against Arif alias Aarav, his mother Jaituni, wife Arshida, brothers Irfan, Noman, Momen and associate Tarif Khan, all residents of Dhunela, police said.
“During interrogation, it was revealed that Tarif Khan used to work as a driver for Arif earlier. In 2022, Arif was in the transport business. Both of them, in a planned manner, contacted the victim through an insurance policy and trapped her in a love affair. Subsequently, Arif married her at a temple,” a spokesperson of the Gurugram Police said.
A case has been registered under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2022, popularly known as the Love Jihad Act, against the main accused and six others at the Sector 14 police station on Wednesday.
Subsequently, Arif and Tarif Khan were arrested.
