The Allahabad High Court in India 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 leveled 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 offense, 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.”
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