With cases of alleged ‘Love Jihad’ piling up in the Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, a Hindu seer has announced that he is making preparations to form a Hindu Task Force to prevent such cases from happening.
Rajashekharananda Swami of Vajradehi Mutt in Gurupur, in the outskirts of Mangaluru, told presspersons that the task force will check ‘love jihad’ cases across the state.
“Hindu organisations and religious leaders are fed up of 'love jihad' cases. Initially, the task force will be functioning in Dakshina Kannada district. The main responsibility of the task force is to identify and prevent 'love jihad' at the initial stages itself. I have held two rounds of meetings with various Hindu organisations,” he was quoted as saying in the Times of India.
The seer promised that the task force, which will include 30 women, would be functional in a week in Dakshina Kannada and involve doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and advocates.
The seer’s statement comes just days after he publicly urged the Moodbidri police to ‘rescue’ a Hindu woman who went missing two days before her wedding. The outspoken seer warned of a protest in case the missing woman was not brought back by the police.
Priyanka, the bride-to-be, a resident of Daregudde in Moodbidri, went missing on December 9 after the mehendi celebrations for her wedding. Her family had filed a missing persons complaint at the Moodbidri police station.
Pro-Hindu groups are already actively opposing inter-religious relationships in Dakshina Kannada. Recently, sustained pressure from a right-wing group forced a 20-year old Hindu woman to break off her relationship with a Muslim man in Mangaluru.
Members of Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, ‘counselled’ the woman, alleging that her boyfriend was a drug peddler.
Meanwhile, in another similar case, the parents of a Hindu girl filed a complaint in Shivamogga on Wednesday stating that their daughter who married a Muslim man was ‘missing’.