Indian court frees Muslim revert confined by family over Islam

NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — An Indian court has freed a Muslim who spent more than three months confined at his family home after his Hindu relatives opposed his decision to embrace Islam, ending an ordeal in which he says he was threatened, forced to shave his beard, made to perform Hindu rituals and compelled to declare on camera that he had renounced Islam.

Ayush Malik, 31, told the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday that he had embraced Islam voluntarily in 2014 and had continued practicing the faith for about 12 years despite opposition from his parents and other relatives. He said his family placed him under house arrest on June 4 amid opposition to his Muslim faith and his marriage to a Muslim woman Chandni Qureshi.

During his confinement, Malik said he was forced to remove his beard, perform Hindu religious rituals before a camera and record a statement saying he had abandoned Islam and returned to Hinduism. His account presented the court with a stark conflict between family attempts to determine his religious identity and his constitutional right as an adult to choose his own faith.

The case comes amid an increasingly contentious climate surrounding religious conversion in India, particularly conversions from Hinduism to Islam and Christianity. Hindu nationalist groups have for years campaigned against such conversions, while several Indian states have enacted laws restricting religious conversions involving force, fraud or inducement.

For Muslim and Christian minorities, those laws and campaigns have raised wider concerns over whether constitutional freedom of religion is being narrowed by social and political pressure against leaving Hinduism.

Malik’s case turned that debate into a question of personal liberty.

A friend filed a habeas corpus petition before the High Court saying Malik was being unlawfully confined by his father, Devraj Singh Malik, with assistance from state authorities. On Sept. 9, the court ordered Malik’s father and state authorities to produce him and described claims surrounding his confinement and purported state involvement as serious.

Appearing before Justice Sandeep Jain on Wednesday, Malik told the court directly that nobody had converted him.

Malik, who holds a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy, said he had independently chosen to profess and practice Islam and that his conversion involved no coercion, threat, undue influence or inducement.

He also told the judge that he had married Chandni Qureshi of his own free will, a relationship that his parents opposed.

His father challenged Malik’s account before the court, claiming his son had been influenced or “brainwashed” and had not genuinely chosen Islam. He said concern for his son’s welfare was behind his opposition to Malik’s decision to embrace Islam and his marriage to Qureshi.

But the court found nothing before it that gave it reason to disbelieve Malik.

“His categorical statement before the Court is that he has voluntarily embraced Islam,” the court said, adding that nothing presented to it suggested his decision resulted from threats, coercion, undue influence or pressure.

The finding was significant in a country where allegations of coercion frequently surround conversion to minority religions and where Muslim-Hindu relationships have become politically charged.

India’s Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practice and propagate religion. Yet religious conversion has increasingly become an arena of political contestation, particularly in states where Hindu nationalist groups campaign against Muslims and Christians they accuse of converting Hindus.

Malik’s experience also illustrates how those tensions can reach inside families when an adult rejects the religion into which he was born.

The High Court made clear that family authority ends where an adult’s constitutional autonomy begins.

Justice Jain held that an adult is ordinarily entitled to determine his religion according to his own conscience and that such a choice cannot be displaced merely because relatives refuse to accept it.

The court extended the same principle to Malik’s choice of partner, holding that deciding whom to marry or establish a relationship with is an integral part of the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of India’s Constitution.

Family expectations, it said, could not themselves provide a legitimate basis for restricting that freedom.

“Once an adult person has unequivocally expressed his free will and choice before the Court, such choice is ordinarily entitled to be respected,” the court said, unless circumstances recognized under law showed that the decision was not freely made.

The ruling is particularly consequential because Malik’s exercise of religious freedom did not stop at a private declaration of belief. He told the court that he wanted to continue living as a Muslim despite having been pressured to publicly present himself as having returned to Hinduism.

The court declined to substitute either his family’s wishes or its own assessment of what might be beneficial for the choices of a competent adult.

It acknowledged his father’s stated concern for his welfare but ruled that parental concern could not override Malik’s constitutionally protected autonomy over his faith, residence and choice of life partner.

Finding no lawful justification for continuing to restrict his liberty, the court set Malik free.

It ruled that he could live wherever and with whomever he chose, profess and practice his chosen religion and make his own decisions concerning his marriage to Qureshi.