The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine whether anti-conversion laws which have been enacted by various states have an impact on the children of interfaith couples.
A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justices JP Pardiwala and Manoj Misra stayed the proceedings against a Catholic priest, who had baptised a child on the request of his Christian mother, separated from her Hindu husband.
The plea has been filed against a Gujarat High Court order, rejecting to quash a First Information Report (FIR) registered under Sections 3 & 4 of the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003 (the Act), concerning forcible conversion. A single bench of Justice Sandeep N Bhatt refused to grant relief to the Catholic priest, stating that the defense raised in the case required the test of trial.
The bench heard lawyer for the petitioner woman, who argued that there was no case of forcible conversion made out, but the Gujarat police had registered an FIR against the priest who baptised the child in 2012, when the child was a little less than eight years old, at the behest of social worker Dharmendrakumar Natwarsinh Rathod in 2020. He had claimed that the boy could not be converted without the permission of the District Magistrate. He had further claimed that the school leaving certificate of the child said he was Hindu and the parents were also married through the Hindu rites. Moreover, it is one of the grounds of the petitioner that the first informant, Rathod, had no locus standi to lodge an FIR as he is a complete stranger to the issue at hand.
Although the priest had approached the Gujarat High Court, he did not get relief and the investigation under anti-conversion laws was allowed to continue. According to the averments of the petitioner, Charles, the trial is currently pending at the stage of prosecution evidence. It was then that a special leave petition was filed before Supreme Court through Advocate Shivansh B Pandya.
The petitioner has further argued that the High Court, while rejecting the interim relief prayer for the priest, has failed to consider that there has been no conversion within the meaning of the Act. It is his case that according to the facts and circumstances in the case, there was no “renunciation” of one religion and “adoption” of another, and instead, the child has been treated as being born to a Christian mother and raised with Christian beliefs, which is a pre-condition to administration of the rite of baptism to a child.
“It is submitted that the provisions of the Act need to be interpreted to ensure that only the acts which amount to conversions without consent of the participating individual/ their legal guardians would constitute an offence,” the plea states.
One of the grounds taken by the petitioner is that the constitutional validity of the Act itself is under challenge before the top court.
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