A fierce and prolonged legal battle is going on in the Supreme Court of India (SCI) in a case related to the “protection from arrest” granted to several top officials of a noted agricultural university accused of mass religious conversions in the Northern State of Uttar Pradesh (UP).

The State of UP, through the attorney general, in hearings on September 20, 2024, in the Supreme Court, is trying its best to argue why the SCI should no longer protect the accused officials.

This legal saga dates to December 2023, when the SCI intervened and postponed an order by the Allahabad High Court, a regional court based in UP, directing the university officials to surrender themselves while refusing to quash a First Information Report (FIR) lodged against them in November 2023 accusing of unlawful mass religious conversions.

The SCI also granted interim protection from arrest for the implicated officials, including a vice chancellor, the director, and several professors at the Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture Technology and Science (SHUATS), one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious universities.

The SHUATS vice chancellor and the other officials have been accused of allegedly coercing a woman into converting to Christianity through unlawful means like inducements and misuse of authority and forcing her to bring nearly 60 other women to a conversion meeting.

The SCI extended the interim protection to the university officials in January and again in March this year.

In the latest hearings, the attorney general submitted that the FIRs stated that all those unlawfully converted, in this case, were given a new Aadhaar card, or national identity card, in which their names were changed after conversion.

As evidence of this, the attorney general said that illegal Aadhar card printing machines and bogus Aadhar cards had been recovered from the university’s premises.

When the SCI judges pointed out that the petitioners filed an Article 32 petition for quashing the FIRs, the attorney general submitted that the court should not entertain the petition considering the evidence against the accused.

The FIRs and chargesheets were filed to disclose the commission of a cognizable offense. Therefore, no case for quashing can be made, he said.

The UP police have claimed that investigations have revealed that substantial funds to the tune of INR 340 million received by SHUATS from nearly 20 foreign countries since 2005 were utilized for unlawful conversion activities.

Some of the countries include the U.S., Afghanistan, Japan, Libya, Iraq, Germany, Canada, Guyana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Bahrain, Netherlands, Philippines, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, Australia, Nepal, Bhutan, and Nigeria.