The Maharashtra government has formed a 13-member panel — ‘Inter-caste and Interfaith marriage-family coordination committee’ — that will look into grievances filed by family members of couples locked in interfaith marriages. The committee will assist only if it receives a complaint or request for help.
The panel, which will be led by Maharashtra’s Minister for State women and child development (WCD) Mangal Prabhat Lodha, will also launch a helpline number to help both parents and children with their grievances.
“We don’t want children do remain cut off from their families even after they are married to someone against their parent’s wish. This panel has been set up to make sure there are no cases like Shradhha Walker in future,” said the minister.
The panel was formed after the Shraddha Walkar case, where a woman belonging to Maharashtra’s Vasai, was killed by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala, who chopped her body into 35 pieces, kept the pieces in a 300-litre fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in South Delhi’s Mehrauli before dumping them across the city.
Earlier, it was reported that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was already mulling the grounds for an anti-conversion law in the state with party leaders demanding stricter laws for the ‘love jihad’ issue.
The issue of ‘love jihad’ has been a constant in garnering headlines over the last few years and reignited in Maharashtra in the backdrop of the Shraddha Walkar murder case in which the victim who hailed from the state and had shifted to Delhi with her partner was killed and chopped by him.
The murder sparked massive outrage as soon as it was reported and brought to focus the issue of ‘love jihad’ once again.
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