RANCHI: The Suspended Registrar (Vigilance) of Jharkhand High Court, Mohammed Mushtaq Ahmed, accused in the Tara Shahdeo love-jihad case, was finally dismissed by the state government on Wednesday.
National-level shooter Tara Shahdeo, in a statement recorded before a judicial magistrate, had alleged that Ahmed had arranged her marriage according to Hindu traditions at Hotel Radisson Blu in Ranchi and came to their house the same night with Muslim clerics to solemnize nikah.
"The Cabinet gave its approval for suspension of the then Registrar General (Vigilance) Mushtaq Ahemd, presently suspended and reporting at headquarters in Sahebganj," said Cabinet Secretary SKG Rahate.
Ahmed is accused of hatching a conspiracy to convert Tara Shahdeo into Islam and he motivated Shahdeo to marry Ranjeet Singh Kohli alias Raquibul Hassan and acted as his guardian during the whole episode.
Shahdeo, in her statement recorded before the judicial magistrate, named Ahmed several times as a friend of Kohli, and stated that he was present on all the occasions when her marriage was being arranged - right from the negotiation to the final talks about her marriage. Shahdeo said that when she was forced to undergo nikah on July 8, Ahmed was present along with Muslim clerics and a 'kazi'.
The CBI, in its charge sheet, has stated that Shahdeo was repeatedly raped by her husband and Ahmed molested Shahdeo. The charge sheet has been filed against Ahmed, Tara Shahdeo's husband Ranjeet Singh Kohli and his mother Kaushal Rani (Kaushar Begum), upholding Shahdeo's allegations of deceit, exploitation and torture.
Shahdeo was granted divorce by a family court in Ranchi in June this year on the ground of cruelty. In her petition, she had pleaded for divorce saying that Kohli married her in July 2014, keeping her in the dark about his religion, and started torturing her from the very next day to get her converted into Islam.
According to the FIR lodged by her at Hindpiri Police Station after escaping from her husband's Blair Apartments flat on September 19, 2014, the mother-son duo used to torture her after she refused to change her religion.
The allegations had caused a national stir with the Union home ministry seeking a report on the purported case of 'love jihad', a term coined by certain Hindu groups to describe sham marriages solemnised by people of minority communities to effect forceful conversion to Islam.