Yet another disturbing incident of a Muslim man assuming a Hindu identity to lure a Hindu girl into a false marriage, only to sexually exploit her later has come to light from Gorakhpur, UP.

Modassir Ansari posed as a Hindu to trap a minor Hindu girl from his village in Gagaha area of Gorakhpur, and married her in an Arya Samaj temple. After ‘marriage’, Ansari and his two friends, Atiullah and Akhtar, gang-raped the girl. The shocked and distressed girl somehow managed to escape and return to her parents’ home, where she narrated the horrific episode and then consumed poison.

After the father of the victim – who is admitted in a medical college fighting for her life – complained, police registered an FIR against Modassir Ansari, Atiullah and Akhtar for kidnapping and raping the minor, under relevant IPC sections & POCSO Act.

The horrifying incident has created tension in the village and additional police has been deployed. As the accused are absconding, police have taken their family members into custody for interrogation about their whereabouts.

At a time when Supreme Court is sermonizing about ‘benefits’ of  inter-faith marriages, such cases of Hindu girls being trapped into fake/forced marriages with Muslim men and suffering unimaginable exploitation later on are spreading like an epidemic across the country.

It is high time a special law was brought to hand out exemplary punishment to the men and the supporting ecosystem (friends, family, clerics, lawyers etc) behind such depraved, religiously-motivated crimes.

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