SC ruling a welcome move

By quashing multiple FIRs against officials of a private university accused of illegal conversion, the Supreme Court has raised serious questions on the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.

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Stating that the law cannot be ‘allowed to be made a tool of harassment of innocent persons’, a bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra pulled up the prosecuting agencies for acting on their ‘whims and fancies’ and on the basis of ‘completely incredulous material’. The vice chancellor, director, and three other officials of the Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences, which was earlier known as the Allahabad Agricultural Institute, who were faced with a criminal case of religious conversion and got no relief from the Allahabad High Court, had moved the Supreme Court. A key provision of the 2021 law was that no third party could initiate a complaint, and only a relative could complain about illegal conversion. This law was amended in 2024 to allow anyone to file a co