Woman denies ‘love jihad’, court lets her to go with lover

BANGALORE - The Karnataka High Court Friday allowed a woman to go with her Muslim husband as the state police sought more time to complete their probe into reports of non-Muslim women being lured by Muslim youth with the intention to convert them to Islam.

“There is no ‘love jihad’ and I had gone with my boyfriend on my own,” Siljaraj told reporters as she left the court premises with her lover whom she married. Earlier on Oct 21, the court had sent Siljaraj to her parents’ custody for three weeks.

Siljaraj’s father, C. Selvaraj of Chamarajnagar district, about 180 km from here, had moved a habeas corpus petition before the high court, saying his daughter was missing since August last year and he had come to know she had eloped with a Muslim youth to Kerala.

He filed the petition after posters had come up in Kerala warning of ‘love jihad’, referring to attempts to lure non-Muslim girls with the promise of marriage and then convert them to Islam.

The Karnataka police had traced Siljaraj with the help of the Kerala police and brought her before Justice K. Sreedhar Rao and Justice Ravi Malimath of the Karnataka High Court Oct 21.

Siljaraj had told the judges that she had married Aksar of Kannur in Kerala on her own and was undergoing religious training after getting converted to Islam.

Rao and Malimath had directed her to stay with her parents till the police complete the investigations. They had also said that since she was an adult, if it was found to be a bonafide love marriage, she could go back to Aksar.