RANCHI: A Family Court in Ranchi on Tuesday finally allowed the divorce petition filed by national shooter Tara Shahdeo against her husband Ranjeet Singh Kohli alias Raqibul Hassan on the ground of cruelty.
Shahdeo in her petition pleaded for divorce saying that Kohli married to her in July 2014, keeping her in dark about his religion, and started torturing her from the very next day to get converted into Islam.
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 conversions into Islam.
“Family Court of BK Gautam, today allowed our petition filed on January 2017 on the grounds of cruelty after it found the documents and evidences produced before it were sufficient to prove that cruelty had taken place right from the day of marriage,” said Shahdeo’s Counsel LCN Shahdeo.
The Court observed that no one could be forced for changing his or her religion, he added.
According to the FIR lodged by her at Hindpiri Police Station, the mother-son duo used to torture her after she refused to change her religion after escaping from her husband’s Blair Apartments flat on September 19, 2014.
She also accused both of them of running a dubious voluntary organization of amassing huge wealth through mysterious dealings and political links.
The FIR was registered under Section 498A (domestic violence) despite Tara repeatedly insisting that she had been tormented for over a month for conversion into Islam.
The then Chief Minister Hemant Soren, considering the seriousness of the matter, later referred the case to the CBI after being insisted by Shahdeo.