Karnataka has registered 17 cases under the Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Act, 2022, popularly known as the anti-conversion law. The cases were filed between 2023 and 2026, with no convictions to date. According to figures submitted by Home Minister G Parameshwara on March 26 in response to a question by BJP MLC DS. Arun, three cases have ended in closure (B) reports, three remain under police investigation and seven are pending before various courts.
The maximum number of cases were filed in 2023, when the BJP was in power. Of the 17 cases, 10 were registered in 2023, followed by three in 2024, four in 2025 and none so far in 2026.
The Congress, which assumed office mid-2023, had promised in its election manifesto to repeal the problematic law, but no legislative action has followed despite a draft repeal reportedly being circulated soon after the party took charge.
The repeal demand has resurfaced periodically. It was raised at the 37th General Body Meeting of the Catholic Bishops Council of India, and Christian groups in Bengaluru had even planned a protest ahead of the budget session beginning March 4, though the demonstration was later deferred. Last year, during St Mary’s Feast in Bengaluru, Archbishop Peter Machado publicly urged the government to repeal the law. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who attended the event, assured that the matter would be addressed “in due course”.
Bengaluru reported seven cases, with four in 2023, one in 2024 and two in 2025. Other districts that reported cases include Chitradurga (2), Gadag (2), and one each from Mysuru, Haveri, Kodagu, Belagavi, Kalaburagi, and Shivamogga.
The first case under the Act, filed in Bengaluru on October 13, 2022, involved a 22-year-old Muslim man accused of forcibly converting an 18-year-old Hindu woman after the two allegedly eloped. The case ended in his acquittal on March 4, 2026, after the complainant, the woman’s mother, told the court that no forced conversion had occurred. The magistrate noted that the parties had reached a compromise.
In 2024, TNM spoke to several people booked for allegedly attempting conversions through “allurements,” as well as to advocates and police officers. Their accounts suggested that the law is being used largely as a tool of harassment and, in some cases, to settle personal scores.
