Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday claimed the recent triple murder in Golaghat district of Assam was an outcome of ‘love-jihad’, and a chargesheet in the case will be filed within 15 days.
‘Love jihad’ is a term often used by right-wing activists to allege a ploy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into religious conversion through marriage.
On Monday, a 25-year-old man killed his wife and her parents over some family issues and later surrendered at the police station with his nine-month-old baby. The accused Nazibur Rahman Bora, an engineer by profession, had confessed to the killing of Sanghamitra Ghosh and her parents Sanjeev and Junu Ghosh, where she had been staying, according to police.
CM Sarma had visited Sanghamitra’s younger sister Ankita in Golaghat on Friday, and later told reporters that the incident showed “love jihad is a reality”.
“The deceased family was Hindu and the accused belongs to the Muslim community. He first introduced himself with a Hindu name on Facebook… the woman learnt to use drugs when the couple had escaped to Kolkata,” the Chief Minister said.
Sarma also alleged that the accused was a drug addict and involved with trafficking of contraband substances. “The woman was given injectable drugs under the influence of which she was impregnated. She was tortured when she went to live at the house of the accused, and returned to her maternal home later,” he claimed.
Nazibur has been arrested and the child has been sent to a shelter home under protection of the Chief Welfare Committee, Superintendent of Police, Golaghat, Pushkin Jain said, as reported by The Indian Express.
The SP said that the family had frequent quarrels and multiple cases were registered against each other. There were also disputes over their child.
On the day of the incident, he had entered their home, and after another argument, he had attacked them with a sharp object.
Police said that Sanghamitra and Nazibur met on Facebook in June 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. They left for Kolkata in October that year, when her parents filed an FIR against him at the Golaghat police station under Section 366 of the IPC (abducting a woman to forcefully compel her into marriage). By then, the two had registered their marriage in a court in Kolkata, and later Sanghamitra was brought back to Golaghat.
Claiming that Nazibur had introduced himself to Sanghamitra on Facebook using a Hindu name, CM Sarma appealed to young women to “think many times” before marrying a person of another faith.
“I had been worried about this, of these kinds of incidents of hiding your identity on Facebook and getting girls to marry and in the end, such a situation is created that the girl cannot return. Or even if she returns, society does not accept. And in this kind of a situation, the girl ultimately converts and gives up everything. I appeal to our young women not to make friendships with men so easily on Facebook and other social media…And the people of one religion before marrying people of another religion should think about it many times. Because we begin with two different ways of life,” he said.
“When we talk of love jihad, a lot of people question us and ask where is love jihad? But this incident in Golaghat city shows that love jihad is a reality. The story in the movie Kerala Story is not false,” he added.
The CM also claimed that the marriage was undertaken by a “kazi” and not through the Special Marriage Act.