By Matters India Reporter
Allahabad, March 3, 2023: The Allahabad High Court has refused to grant anticipatory bail to the vice chancellor and the director of a Christian autonomous university questioning the dubious nature of their charitable works.
\Rajendra Bihari Lal, vice chancellor of Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (formerly Allahabad Agricultural Institute) and its director Vinod Bihari Lal moved the court in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh for anticipatory bails.
They were summoned for interrogation in connection with a year-old alleged mass religious conversion case.
Single bench of Justice Manju Rani Chauhan in her February 28 order said, “The anticipatory bail applications stand rejected”.
“The nature of accusation of offence, role of the applicants being highly influential person, their intent behind the charitable works, appears to be dubious, affecting the interest of marginal section of society, object of the law and the impact of the same on society, I do not find it a fit case for granting anticipatory bail,” the court said.
The police summoned the duo to record their statements in February. They, however, preferred to seek anticipatory bail instead of joining the investigation.
Their names, according to the police, cropped up during the investigation into the alleged mass religious conversion case at Hariharganj, a town in Fatehpur district on April 14, 2022, Maundy Thursday.
Some 70 people belonging to the Evangelical Church of India had gathered there for special service and some Hindu nationalist activists alleged it as a case of mass religious conversion of Hindus to Christianity.
The police had then registered First Information Report against 55 people and arrested 26.
During the course of the investigation, some accused the Lal brothers of funding religious conversion.
The court order further said, “It can also be interpreted in a manner that the allegations of mass conversion as levelled against the applicants, who are influential persons, and they are channelizing the funds collected from overseas groups for the above purpose, such act shows the gravity of offence, therefore, instant case is not fit for grant of anticipatory bail as the issue of security and violation of citizens’ right to freedom of conscience and right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion is involved.”
The court also dismissed their arguments that others arrested in connection with the same cases were released on bail and they were not even named as accused in the instant case.
“This court finds that accused are influential persons who are involved in mass conversion as the evidence in this regard has already been collected by the investigating officer, therefore, they cannot claim parity with other persons who have been released on anticipatory bail,” the order said.
“The applicants,” the court further said, “are also required in other matters wherein SIT (special investigation team) has been constituted to investigate channelization of funds of the Institution which according to the material collected till date by the investigating officer, is being used for the purposes of mass conversion.”
The present case, according to a senior Church official, is the result of internal rivalry among institution’s officials.
They were earlier members of the Protestant Church of North India but now have formed a separate group – Yeshu Darbar – and function under it, annoying others associated with the institution.
Christians make up 0.18 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s 200 million people.