leaderJabalpur bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court said the case was ‘ill-intentioned and made to belittle his image in society’
The top court of a central Indian state has quashed a criminal case of child trafficking against a Protestant leader, saying it was ill-intended and meant to damage his image.The Jabalpur bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed the false case on Sept. 23, said Shashank Shekhar, a lawyer representing Ajay Lall, founder of the Central India Christian Mission.
The high court noted that the case against the petitioner is sugarcoated with ill-intention and made to belittle his image in the society, Shekhar told UCA News.Police in Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district charged Lall in August with committing various offenses under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act.Lall was accused of not sharing details of two children who stayed at his orphanage 15 years ago, which led to the registration of a case of child trafficking.
The bench of Justice Sanjay Dwivedi slammed the police for registering the false case. He said the action was initiated against Lall without a complaint or objection from any children or their parents.The high court also noted the arbitrary role played by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), a statutory federal body to protect the rights of children.There was no role for the child rights panel to interfere in the case as children never raised objections, it said.
Church leaders said the NCPCR team led by its chairperson Priyank Kanoongo has conducted many raids on Church-run orphanages, schools, and hostels under the guise of preventing religious conversion and child trafficking in Madhya Pradesh.The state in central India is ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,A sweeping anti-conversion law, enacted by the BJP government, is in force in Madhya Pradesh where Christians account for a mere 0.27 percent of the state’s 72 million people, most of them Hindus.
A well-orchestrated campaign and negative media coverage was carried out to malign the image of an institution that extends a helping hand to poor children, said Daniel John, a Catholic leader based in the state capital Bhopal.Several Christian institutions are trapped in similar false cases in the state as part of a strategy, Church leaders said.A retired Catholic bishop, priests, nuns, and pastors are among those facing false cases under the draconian anti-conversion law.
