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new law brought in by the government of India’s most populous state will be used to harass and incarcerate legitimate interfaith couples, rights lawyers have warned.
The law against so-called “Love Jihad”, an Islamophobic conspiracy theory, was passed as an executive order by the BJP government of right-wing Hindu monk-turned-chief minister Yogi Adityanath in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
It makes “unlawful” religious conversion a punishable offence with a jail term up to 10 years, and will apply in cases where conversion is a result of marriage, misrepresentation, force, undue influence or other “fraudulent” means.
