NEW DELHI: Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva wrote to the city police chief on Monday, demanding an extensive probe into an alleged incident of religious conversion at a night shelter to find out whether it was the handiwork of any fundamentalist group.
The Delhi Police should enquire whether accused Mohammad Kalim was operating alone or was he associated with some fundamentalist group, Sachdeva wrote to police commissioner Sanjay Arora.
Kalim was arrested last week on a complaint from one Sandeep Saagar, alleging that he was lured and pressured by the accused to convert to Islam. Saagar worked as a caretaker of a night shelter run by the Delhi government at Turkman Gate, Sachdeva claimed.
The police said a case under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was lodged at the Chandni Mahal police station and the investigation was taken up.
Sachdeva claimed that according to Saagar, the accused was also “pressuring” two other occupants of the night shelter to convert to Islam, which was a “serious” issue. “The Delhi BJP has been for quite long saying that the campaign of religious conversion and love jihad by Islamic fundamentalists has reached the doorstep of the city and the Turkman Gate incident and the killing of a minor girl in the Shahbad Dairy area are its glaring examples,” Sachdeva wrote in his letter to Arora.
With the developments reported from the night shelter, one has reasons to suspect that Islamic fundamentalists may be targeting poor inhabitants of other night shelters too, he added. The Delhi BJP chief urged the police commissioner for an “extensive” probe into the matter and to direct the in-charges of police stations across the city to closely monitor the activities at the night shelters.