How the Stalking and Murder of a Woman is Fanning Religious Tensions in India

Adal Singh Rawat remembers the man who shot dead his niece last week, on October 26. Rawat, a resident of Ballabgarh, a small town in the northern Indian state of Haryana, knew of Tauseef as the young man who routinely stalked the daughter of his sister, 21-year-old Nikita Tomar. Tomar and Tauseef studied in the same college. In 2018, things escalated when Tauseef kidnapped Tomar and held her captive for approximately two hours. 

Tomar’s family claims the boy, a Muslim, wanted to marry their daughter, a Hindu. “The police rescued her within hours of her abduction,” Rawat told VICE News. Immediately upon her release, however, Rawat said the family was pressured “politically and internally” by the accused’s family, which is politically and financially influential in the neighbourhood. “It was a matter of our girl’s honour,” he said. They eventually dropped the police complaint. 

Two years later, Tauseef shot Tomar in broad daylight, right outside her college. 

The murder has triggered violence, with the right-wing describing it as an act of “love jihad”—an Islamophobic conspiracy theory that claims that Muslim men lure non-Muslim women to convert them. 

Over the weekend, more than 200 protestors seeking justice for Tomar clashed with the police in Ballabgarh. Ten policemen were injured, while 30 people were detained. 

Tomar’s family agrees that religion had to play a role in their daughter’s killing. “Unless you convert the woman, you cannot marry her,” said Rawat, a practicing lawyer. “What else can be the reason behind the kidnapping and marriage proposals?”

“Love jihad” is not defined by the Indian government, and it has maintained that no such case has been reported by its central agencies. Adarshdeep Singh, the Commissioner of Police in Faridabad and ACP headquarters, told the media that no evidence of “love jihad” has been found in their investigation yet. 

But in India, this allegation can set off a series of intimidation, political pressure and violence. On October 31, Saturday, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) sounded a death warning to the Muslim community in his state. “If you don’t mend your ways, your ‘Ram naam satya hain’ journey will begin,” said Adiyanath during a rally in the state for the upcoming by-elections. 

“Ram naam satya hain” is Hindi for “The name of Ram is the truth”, a recitation that is chanted by Hindus while carrying a dead body to be cremated. The chief minister was referring to incidents of “love jihad”. This came on the day when the Allahabad High Court in UP stated that conversion just for marriage is unacceptable. 

A day later, on November 1, the government of Haryana—the state where the crime took place—announced that it’s mulling over “legal provisions” against incidents of “love jihad”. 

“Love jihad” theory is rampant online as well. Last week, Facebook pulled down three “love jihad” community pages for bullying, moral policing and violating the privacy of interfaith couples. 

Several right-wing groups have since made provocative public statements and issued threats of violence. “They are killing our sisters and daughters, and we can’t even resort to violence?” Vikas Chauhan, the chief of right-wing fringe outfit Karni Sena, told The Quint. 

Vishnu Gupta, the founder and president of a prominent right-wing organisation, Hindu Sena, told VICE News that the only narrative to draw from this case is communal in nature. “‘Love jihad’ is when a Muslim boy forcefully, or on the pretext of love, tries to marry a Hindu girl, sexually exploits her, has kids and then abandons her,’” said Gupta. “Nikita’s murder is a part of Islamic jihad.” 

On November 1, Gupta’s organisation defaced the signboard of India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi, and wrote “Jihad Terrorist Islamic Centre” on it. 

“In France, these kinds of events are called terrorism,” added Gupta. “Here, in India, we pay no attention.” Hindu groups have been demanding that a law be enforced to tackle “love jihad”. “There should also be a law that forbids dharm parivartan (conversions),” said Gupta. 

In the push for a “love jihad” narrative, however, the story of a woman abused and murdered has been sidelined. Several surveys state that India is among the most dangerous countries for women. According to data from 2018, a case of stalking was reported every 55 minutes. The year 2019 saw 8,890 cases of stalking incidents, along with 32,260 cases of abduction of women to compel her for marriage, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. 

In July this year, a man, allegedly a stalker, murdered a 19-year-old woman and her father two days before the victim’s wedding. In August, a woman in the city of Gurugram was stabbed 30 times by her stalker, a former classmate. In March, a stalker stabbed to death a 24-year-old woman, and grievously injured her two sisters. 

Stalking is a crime under the Indian Penal Code. It is also known to be grossly underreported. Kavita Krishnan, a women’s rights activist, explained to VICE News that it’s very common to see stalking complaints being taken back, or the police brokering a compromise between the victim and the accused. 

“This happens even when there are no external pressures,” said Krishnan, who has previously spoken up against stalking, including that of her mother’s. “I’ve known of cases where the police brokered a compromise and it subsequently led to the murder of the woman,” she said. 

In Tomar’s case, a case of molestation was reportedly filed against Tauseef in September for continued harassment, which the police failed to act upon. Rawat, the victim’s uncle, told VICE News that the 2018 abduction case has been reopened by the police for investigation.

Activists have often pressed the need for more awareness about stalking due to the prevailing stigma of filing a police complaint against it. Most often, stalking cases are not taken seriously by the society and the police. In many cases, the matter of the woman’s “honour” becomes an impediment. 

The “love jihad” narrative has been criticised for diverting attention from India’s social realities. Last month, a prominent jewellery brand was forced to take down an ad displaying a Hindu-Muslim family. It was accused of promoting “love jihad”. 

Gupta argued that the outrage by believers of “love jihad”—including the one that followed Tomar’s case—is, in fact, not violence. “This is our response to ‘love jihad’. Protesting and demonstrating is our right,” he said. “In fact, [the protest in Ballabgarh] was barely violence. Nobody died or was grievously injured.”

Activists and critics assert that not only does the “love jihad” theory promote violence against a particular community, but it also promotes an image of a Hindu woman having no agency. 

“Creating this false narrative is dishonest because [the right wing] are not concerned about women at all. They attack the autonomy of Hindu women and paint us as property of the community,” said Krishnan. “They’re just trying to give credence to this term, ‘love jihad’. Even a lot of media is using it as if it’s real. It’s a violent term for both the Muslims and women.”

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