Soon after the Madras High Court handed over the probe of the death of the 17-year-old girl from Tamil Nadu's Michaelpatti village to the CBI on Monday, the BJP demanded an anti-forced conversion law in the state and accused the MK Stalin government of working on an "anti-Hindu" agenda.
Notably, the case pertains to a 17-year old girl, Lavanya, from a poor background, who studied in a Christian Missionary School in Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur district and was allegedly being forced to convert to Christianity by her school. Allegations of torture after her refusal to convert were also levelled by the girl. According to police, the victim had consumed poisonous material on January 9 and had succumbed ten days later.
Speaking to ANI, Shehzad Poonawala, BJP National Spokesperson said, "We demand that her family should be given ex-gratia and a government job and the government should make forced anti-conversion law in the state immediately."
Poonawala welcomed the decision by the High Court and said that it proves the stance of his party on the matter was right.
"In the case of Lavanya, the Madras High Court has given the decision today that the investigation will be done by the CBI. We welcome this decision. It has been proved today that our stance over the investigation was right. In this entire matter, instead of providing justice to the daughter's family, the government and the police are standing with the criminals," he said.
The BJP spokesperson alleged that the state police did not include the purported video of the deceased in the FIR as a "dying declaration" in which she stated that she was committing suicide as she was being subjected to forced religious conversion.
"The police was harassing the one who had shot this video. They are doing so because be it the DMK government or the Congress government, they have the anti-Hindu agenda. This is why they were trying to disrupt the fight for justice to Lavanya," he alleged.
Raising questions over the "silence" of the Chief Minister on the matter, he said that the deceased did not speak anything against his government, yet Stalin is silent.
"Why is the Chief Minister not speaking on the matter? Did her life have no value? She did not even speak a single word against the government, yet he is not speaking anything on the matter," he said.
Earlier today, a team of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) visited Thanjavur to inquire into the suicidal death of a minor girl in the district.
Earlier on Friday, the Society of Immaculate Heart of Mary moved a petition before the Madurai bench of Madras High Court on Friday in the Thanjavur's girl suicide case.
In the petition, they stated that there was no forced religious conversion happening at school and no student was ever ill-treated.
They also mentioned that the impleading petition has been filed only to dispel the allegations made against them and the institution and not to show anyone in a bad light.
Society of Immaculate Heart of Mary is an organisation under which the school where the girl was studying functions.
( With inputs from ANI )
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