“There is no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an 2:256), but as far as the accused are concerned, they weren’t compelling or forcing their victim to do anything. He could easily have refused to go along, and chosen to be killed instead. No compulsion!

In Karnataka, the Hubballi Police have filed a case against 12 persons, including a Muslim preacher, over the allegations of forcefully converting a Dalit man to Islam. Sridhar Gangadhar (26), of Yadavanahalli in Mandya district, filed a complaint with the Nava Nagar Police, alleging that the accused compelled him to undergo circumcision and converted him to Islam.

Attavar Rehman of Mandya, Azeesab of Bengaluru, Nayaz Pasha, Nadeem Khan, Ansar Pasha, Syed Dastagir, Mohammad Iqbal, Rafiq, Shabbir, Khalid, Shakeel, and Altaf were all identified by Sridhar as the accused. The accused, according to the complaint filed on Saturday, brought the victim to Bengaluru. They confined him in a mosque in Banashankari. They then began preaching Islam to him.

The accused subjected Sridhar to torture and pushed him to consume beef, as per the complaint. The victim experienced complications following circumcision, including bleeding and agonizing wounds with abscesses.

“They took me to a mosque in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, for preaching Islam to me,” he has said in the complaint. “They also forced me to sign an affidavit saying that it was a wilful conversion and gave me a target to convert three people every year to Islam,” the complainant said.

The accused allegedly forced him to hold a gun while taking pictures of him holding it, according to the complaint. In addition, they forced him to make a 35,000 Rupee deposit into their account, Sridhar has stated.

It all started in May, when Rehman allegedly took him to the Banashankari mosque, where Aziz Sab, another accused, started indoctrinating him in Islam, police claimed to quote the complaint.

The victim was attacked near Bhairidevarakoppa by unidentified men when he arrived in Hubballi to visit a woman he met online. Then, he was brought to KIMS Hospital. He stated that’s the reason he made the decision to file a case in Hubballi.

Referring to a complaint lodged with the APMC police station in Navanagar by Sridhar, Mutalik said the man was forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. He stated that the government should take proactive steps against the perpetrators of the crime. He stated that the state government has gotten the anti-conversion measure enacted in the legislature and that it should demonstrate its commitment to acting against forced conversions. Madarsas, according to Muthalik, are behind such crimes.

References: 

opindia.com