UP man booked for forcing conversion, 2 years after marriage

The woman said, she never realized that her husband was a Muslim and had never met her in-laws. She had retained her maiden name after marriage. 

The Muslim man, 25, and his sisters have now been booked under the anti-conversion law. 

According to reports, the woman, Puja Soni, 23, is from Chhattisgarh. She said she had married a man named Ashok Rajput in March 2019 in Delhi, where she works at a hospital. 

She got to know the man, who worked as a plumber, when they started talking over the phone. 

They met and fell in love. "We got married in a temple," she said. The couple started living in Noida. 

In her complaint to police, she said, "On February 7 this year, we had a daughter. On March 22, he took me to his home at the Rait village in Aligarh. There, I found out his name was Afzal Khan. I was forced to read the 'namaz' and stopped from offering my  prayers." 

She further said, "On April 8, they took my daughter away from me. Then, they converted me forcefully and renamed me 'Alna'." 

She alleged her in-laws drove her out of the house and dropped her off at Mathura. 

SHO Abhay Kumar Sharma of the Lodha police station, where the FIR was registered, said, "Ashok Rajput a.k.a Afzal Khan has been booked under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance and Section 323 of the IPC (voluntarily  causing hurt) along with his sisters." 

No arrest has been made so far. 

The woman's statement will be registered in court under Section 164 of the CrPC on Monday. 

So far, 32 FIRs have been registered under the state's anti-conversion law since it came into effect in November last year.