The Allahabad High Court recently denied bail to a Muslim man accused of hiding his religious identity to trap a Hindu woman into establishing a physical relationship with him and forcing her to convert to Islam.
A bench of Justice Saurabh Shyam Shamshery rejected the argument that it was a case of honeytrap and it was the woman who had lured the accused into a relationship to later frame him in a rape case.
The woman filed the First Information Report (FIR) on August 28, 2022. In the FIR, she alleged the accused, Chand Babu, introduced himself as Vishal, and when they started talking, he proposed to her. Subsequently, she started visiting him. Later, the accused threatened her of making her photographs viral and repeatedly raped her, she alleged in the FIR.
The woman alleged on August 24, 2022, when the accused took her to a hotel, she learnt that his real name was Chand Babu and that he was a Muslim.
She alleged she confronted him as to why he had introduced himself as a Hindu, upon which, the accused started forcing her to convert to Islam. Thereafter, she was again allegedly raped at the said hotel by the accused. She alleged she escaped from the hotel “by luck” and lodged the FIR under Sections 376(2)(n), 420, 506 of the IPC and 3/5 of the UP Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act.
The counsel contended that it was impossible that while the woman was meeting the accused regularly, she remained unaware of his religion.
However, the high court noted that except the assertions, there was no material, even prima facie, on record that the accused had been honey-trapped.
The court noted that in his statement, the manager of the said hotel had stated that at the hotel, a copy of Aadhar card of the accused only had been submitted and the signature of the woman was in the name ‘Seema’ which showed that she did not know that her name in the register showed her as a Muslim.
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