How the life of an interfaith couple from Ghaziabad was upended by BJP leader’s ‘love jihad’ claims

“Mujhe help chahiye, mere ghar walon ne mujhe bandi bana rakha hai.”

Help me, my family has been keeping me captive, 25-year-old Sonika Chauhan had pleaded in a surreptitious message to Scroll on June 12.

Until a few weeks ago, Chauhan was running a beauty parlour in the National Capital Region’s Ghaziabad city. Next door, Akbar Khan, her 29-year-old husband, operated a centre to help people fill out government forms.

The two had got married privately in August 2022 but did not move in together. They were trying to convince Chauhan’s family to approve of their union, Khan told Scroll. They hoped to hold a wedding reception with the two families at a hill station later this year.

But their plans were violently upended on May 24. In mere 48 hours, Chauhan’s family has prevented her from meeting Khan and their businesses were vandalised by a mob that saw their marriage as a case of so-called love jihad.

Love jihad is a Hindutva conspiracy theory that holds that Muslim men pose as Hindus to trick Hindu women into relationships with the aim of converting them to Islam.

Chauhan said she has since been held captive by her parents. Khan spent two weeks in prison for purportedly abducting his own wife.

At the scene when the mob gathered at...

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