Police say probe indicates the six were friends, a relative of one of the five Muslim girls accused under conversion Act says they held a meeting, “all agree it was a mistake of judgment out of childishness”.
Till a month-old CCTV footage surfaced last week, appearing to show six giggling girls putting a burqa on one of them, they were known to be a tight group. Neighbours and students of Class 12 in the same school in Moradabad, they would together walk to and from a tuition centre where they were all enrolled, preparing for NEET exams.
Now, after the filing of an FIR under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act against the five Muslim girls in the group, at least one has been sent away to her grandparents’ place, while another has stopped going for tuitions. The families of the accused are hoping the matter will get resolved and put behind, for what they say it was – “a case of misunderstanding”.
The uncle of one of the accused girls says: “All the families met along with some local leaders on Sunday. Everyone agrees the girls were friends and that this was a mistake of judgment that the girls made in their childishness.”
The stringent UP Act was invoked after the family of the sole Hindu girl in the group alleged she was pressured by the others to wear a burqa while they were returning from tuition classes. Barring one girl who is 20, the rest are between the ages of 16 and 18 and minors.