Dear Reader,

It began, as teenage capers tend to do, with laughter and a plan to evade familial injunctions. Six school girls — friends and neighbours — on their way back from NEET tuitions; a burqa and the sort of mischief that has animated childhood across generations. That this now sits at the centre of a police investigation tells us something unsettling about the times we live in.

Five Muslim schoolgirls in Moradabad, several of them minors, have been booked under Uttar Pradesh’s stringent anti-conversion law after a month-old CCTV footage showed them helping the only Hindu girl in the group don a burqa. According to family members of the accused, there was no other intent beyond helping the girl slip unnoticed to a local eatery for a quick snack with them, shielding her from the disapproval of her brother who had strict views on loitering after classes. Yet, what might once have remained a private joke between friends, perhaps to be recounted and laughed over in adulthood, has been reframed as something more sinister — an act of coercion, a supposed attempt at proselytisation. After the complaint from the Hindu girl’s brother, at least one of the six has dropped out of tuitions, another sent away to her grandparents’ place. The once tight-knit friendship has begun to unravel under the weight of accusations and scrutiny.

While the........

© Indian Express