A pregnant woman detained in north India’s Uttar Pradesh last week under the state’s “love jihad” law said Tuesday she received injections from authorities while in detention that she believes induced a miscarriage.
“I was tortured at the Nari Niketan [women’s shelter] for three days after which I developed abdominal pain. First they didn’t listen to me, but when my condition got serious they took me to the hospital, and after which doctors gave me injections. Once the injections were administered, I started bleeding heavily,” Pinki Jahan, 22, told reporters Tuesday, according to India’s News18. She was three to four months pregnant before authorities detained her on December 6.
“Yesterday after my statement at CJM [courts of judicial magistrate] court, my condition deteriorated once again,” she said.
Pinki added she first received an injection on December 11 and began to bleed after.
“After two days, four injections were given to me along with some medicine post which heavy bleeding started,” she revealed.
Authorities in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad city detained Pinki and arrested her husband, Rashid Jahan, 27, on December 6 on suspicion that the couple participated in a union of “love jihad,” or the alleged phenomenon by which Muslim men allegedly convert Hindu women to Islam through the enticement of marriage. Uttar Pradesh passed a law on November 24 punishing anyone found guilty of using marriage to force someone to change religions with up to ten years in prison; the legislation is known colloquially as the “love jihad” law.
Pinki was Hindu before she married Rashid, a Muslim, in July. Prior to the marriage, Pinki converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic name Muskan, the Telegraph reported on December 12. She became pregnant shortly after marrying Rashid.
Authorities arrested Rashid on December 6 after he and Pinki visited a lawyer in Moradabad to register their marriage in Uttar Pradesh; the couple had married in the neighboring state of Uttarakhand.
“The family’s route home was blocked by the Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu nationalist group, who threatened them and called the police,” according to the Telegraph, which spoke with Rashid’s mother about the incident.
The group accused Rashid of forcibly converting Pinki to Islam, and, despite Pinki’s insistence that she married Rashid “of her own will … the police went on to register a case against the couple, saying that Pinki had no proof of their marriage, and that the cops were acting on a complaint filed by the girl’s mother,” News18 recalled.
“The police arrested Rashid and took Muskan [Pinky] to the shelter home, despite her protesting the couple were happily married,” according to the Telegraph.
“This is what Muslims do; first they love, and then they carry out Love Jihad after a few months. We know Pinky [Muskan] is seeing love right now, but after a few days she will find it very difficult to live her life,” Gaurav Bhatnagar, Bajrang Dal’s leader in Moradabad, told the newspaper.
“Our workers are active in the street, locality, villages, cities, everywhere. Our job is to inform the police when Love Jihad cases occur and then it’s the court’s job to punish them,” he explained.
The CJM Court in Moradabad on Monday ordered Pinki “to be sent back to her in-law’s place” according to News18. It remains unclear whether or not Rashid remains in jail.
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