The Gujarat High Court has held that persons claiming to be “victims” of religious conversion could also be booked for the said offence if they subsequently indulge in the act of “inducing other persons to convert.” Persons undergoing religious conversion and subsequently indulging in activity of “pressurising or alluring” other persons cannot be considered as victims but could be prosecuted for the offence, the court said. The court made the observations in an order issued recently after dismissing a bunch of petitions seeking quashing of a 2021 FIR filed at Amod Police station in Bharuch in the case of conversion of 100 tribals from 35 Hindu families since 2006. Gujarat HC Justice Nirzar Desai pronounced a common verbal judgment in a group of petitions on September 30 and October 1

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