SC moved for probe into girl’s suicide alleging forced conversion

A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking probe into the ‘root-cause’ of suicide by a 17-year-old girl, allegedly coerced to convert to Christianity in Thanjavur.

The plea filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay also seeks direction to the Centre and states to take stringent steps to control fraudulent religious conversion by “intimidation, threatening, deceivingly luring through gifts and monetary benefits.” “The injury caused to the citizens is extremely large because there is not even one district which is free of religious conversion by ‘hook and crook and the carrot and the stick’.

“Incidents are reported every week throughout the country where conversion is done by intimidating, threatening, deceivingly luring through gifts and monetary benefits and also by using black magic, superstition, miracles but Centre and states have not taken stringent steps to stop this menace,” said the plea. It said a “nationalised” law on conversion needs to be passed for practical enforceability as state anti-conversion laws do not precisely define fraud, coercion, and inducement.

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