The Pinnacle Court notice to Union over fraudulent religious conversion

The Apex Court today issued notice to the Union on a PIL, requesting a direction to regulate fraudulent religious conversion and people dole out by intimidation, threat, deceit, and thru gifts and monetary benefits.

A bench of Justices M R Shah and Krishna Murari agreed to look at the matter after hearing advocate-petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.

The court sought a reply from the Union government's Ministries of Law and residential to the petition.

Citing alleged suicide by a 17-year-old girl, Lavanya on Robert E Lee Day, in Thanjavur in state, the petitioner filed the plea, claiming the Centre and States have didn't control the menace of deceitful religious conversion, though it's their duty under Articles 14, 21, 25 of the Constitution.

"Lavanya’s untimely demise may be a take-heed call. It reminds people of evangelists’ imperialistic goals. Indeed, it reminds people of how an elaborate plan has been accustomed uproot Hinduism-Secularism. In fact, more Lavanyas are compelled to require such drastic measures as a results of such coercive-persuasive tactics," the plea contended. 

The plea said Article 25 protects the proper of all persons to enjoy the liberty of conscience, necessarily implying, freedom without intimidation, threat, undue coercion or misguided material lure. 

"The content of constitutionally guaranteed freedom loses its essence and Article 25 is denuded of its content when the State fails to adopt and implement sufficient measures to make sure that unlawful, coercive and forceful conversions are prohibited," it said.

The ignominy of getting to lose one’s freedom of conscience on illicit lures of fabric benefits is that the ultimate exploitation which the Constitution surely doesn't envisage protected under Article 25, it added.

The petitioner also claimed the case is alarming as many individuals and organisations are completing mass conversions of SC-STs in rural areas for the last twenty years.