In a judgment with clear implications for religious freedom and the exercise of state power, the Karnataka High Court has delivered a significant early judicial check on the state’s controversial anti-conversion law. The judgment, delivered on July 17, 2025, in Mustafa & Ors. v. The State of Karnataka & Anr., quashed an FIR filed against three Muslim men accused of attempting to unlawfully convert Hindus. With the Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Act (KPRFR Act) having been passed in 2022, the jurisprudence surrounding it is still in its nascent stages. This judgment, while not entering into the constitutional validity of the Act, establishes critical procedural safeguards that will inevitably shape its initial interpretation. Incidentally, when the law was enacted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power. The Indian National Congress (INC) came to power with an overwhelming majority in May 2023 with a promise of repealing this law, yet two years down, it still stands on the stature books.
The judgment is a significant ruling. It is notable, not for what it dismantled, as the Act itself remains on the statute books, but for the specific legal grounds upon which it provided relief. The High Court’s strict focus on the principles of locus standi (the right to bring a complaint) and the failure to establish a prima facie criminal case has resulted in a precedent against the potential weaponization of the law by third-party vigilantes. As a crucial judicial interpretation in the early life of this anti-conversion statute, the Mustafa judgment provides a clear precedent for challenging such prosecutions even as the government reportedly has been planning to repeal the law in the State of Karnataka.
Facts of the case
The facts of the Mustafa case presented a scenario that the KPRFR Act was seemingly designed to address. On May 4, 2025, a complaint was filed by Ramesh Mallappa Navi, a devotee at the Ramatheerth Temple in Jamkhandi. He alleged that the petitioners were distributing Islamic pamphlets and, when confronted, made derogatory statements about Hinduism, declaring their mission was to “make the whole world turn towards Islam” and threatening those who stood in their way. In India today, while this information could be the crux of an angry Whatsapp forward, it is within the framework of Constitutional rights to propagate their own religion under Article 25. Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of the Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.
In this case, the First Information Report (FIR) invoked the specific language of the KPRFR Act, alleging that the petitioners offered “material incentives, such as vehicles and job opportunities in Dubai,” to entice people to convert. This allegation of “allurement” is a central pillar of the offense defined under Section 3 of the Act. With a fact pattern that so closely mirrored the legislative intent, the stage was set for a direct examination of the law’s application. However, the High Court based its decision on fundamental procedural and substantive flaws in the prosecution’s case without needing to delve into a broader constitutional inquiry.
The First Pillar: Who has the right to complain?
The court’s primary reason for quashing the FIR was the complainant’s lack of legal standing. It held unequivocally that the complaint was initiated by a “third party, who does not fall within the category of persons enumerated under Section 4 of the Act.” This made the registration of the FIR “legally invalid.”
Section 4 of the KPRFR Act specifies that a complaint can only be lodged by the person who was allegedly converted, their parents, siblings, or another relative by blood, marriage, or adoption. The complainant in this case, a bystander at the temple, fit none of these criteria.
The strict enforcement of this provision sends a clear message: the machinery of this criminal statute cannot be triggered by just any concerned citizen or ideological activist. This interpretation provides a significant judicial counterweight to the expansive language found in the Act and its counterparts in other states. The Karnataka Act, for instance, also vaguely permits complaints from anyone “in any form associated or a colleague,” and a recent amendment to the Uttar Pradesh law allows “any person” to file an FIR. Such provisions effectively deputize the public, risking a flood of vexatious litigation driven by vigilante groups.
The Mustafa judgment’s reasoning re-centres the legal process on the individual whose rights are actually at stake, the alleged victim of the unlawful conversion. It shifts the focus from the offended sensibilities of an observer to the tangible harm, if any, experienced by the person whose freedom of conscience is the subject of the dispute. This creates a “procedural firewall,” a preliminary legal argument that lawyers can now raise to challenge cases based on generalized accusations or those motivated by communal animosity.
The Second Pillar: Was there an “attempt to convert”?
Beyond the procedural defect, the High Court found a fatal flaw in the substance of the complaint itself. Even taking all the allegations in the FIR at face value, the court concluded that they “fail to satisfy the essential elements of an offence under Section 3 of the Act.”
The reasoning was precise: “There is no allegation that the petitioners converted or attempted to convert any person to another religion.” This finding establishes a high bar for prosecution. It clarifies that generalized acts of proselytization, such as distributing literature, debating theology etc do not, by themselves, constitute a criminal offense under the Act. To invoke the law, the state must demonstrate a specific, targeted act aimed at converting an identifiable individual.
This distinction implicitly draws a line between the constitutionally protected right to “propagate” religion under Article 25 and a prosecutable “attempt to convert” under the KPRFR Act. The judgment indicates that for religious speech to lose its constitutional shield and become a criminal act, it must crystallize into a concrete attempt directed at a specific person. The absence of such an allegation in the Mustafa FIR, despite its detailed account of the petitioners’ actions, rendered the complaint legally unsustainable. This serves as another important safeguard, providing defence counsels with a clear substantive argument against the use of the Act to police all forms of religious outreach.
The National Context: A pattern of legislative escalation
The Karnataka Act is not an isolated piece of legislation but part of a coordinated national trend. Since 2017, states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Haryana have enacted or amended anti-conversion laws, each more stringent than the last. This new generation of statutes shares a common architecture and ideological underpinning, often justified by the unsubstantiated “love jihad” narrative and anxieties about demographic change.
These laws are characterized by:
- Overly Broad Definitions: Terms like “allurement” are defined so broadly as to include offers of free education or employment by religious institutions, potentially criminalizing legitimate charitable work.
- Targeting of Interfaith Marriage: The explicit inclusion of “promise of marriage” as a prohibited means of conversion directly intrudes into the personal autonomy of adults to choose their partners, a right recognized by the Supreme Court as part of the right to life under Article 21.
- Discriminatory Exemptions: Some of these laws exempt “reconversion” to a person’s “immediate previous religion,” a provision widely seen as creating a one-way street that privileges a return to Hinduism while penalizing conversions away from it.
- Intrusive Procedures: The laws mandate a complex pre- and post-conversion declaration process before a District Magistrate, including public notices and police inquiries, transforming a personal act of faith into a matter of public scrutiny and bureaucratic approval.
- Draconian Penalties: Offenses, for example in Rajasthan’s anti-conversion law are cognizable and non-bailable, and the burden of proof is reversed, requiring the accused to prove that the conversion was lawful, contrary to the foundational principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”
This intrusive and blatant disregard for the fundamental freedoms has led to a nationwide legal battle, with numerous petitions challenging these laws pending before various High Courts and the Supreme Court.
The legal challenges to these laws are setting the stage for a potential conflict between two competing lines of Supreme Court jurisprudence. On one side stands the 1977 judgment in Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh. In this case, a Constitution Bench upheld early anti-conversion laws, narrowly interpreting the right to “propagate” religion under Article 25 as not including a fundamental right to convert another person. It validated these laws under the state’s power to maintain “public order.”
On the other side is the modern, expansive doctrine of individual autonomy articulated in the landmark 2017 Right to Privacy judgment, Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India. The nine-judge bench in Puttaswamy established privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21, encompassing dignity, personal autonomy, and the freedom to make fundamental life choices regarding family, marriage, and belief.
The new anti-conversion laws, with their intrusive state surveillance of personal faith decisions, lie directly at the intersection of this doctrinal clash. While Stainislaus focused on preventing conversion through illegitimate means like force or fraud, the new laws regulate the very act of voluntary conversion itself. The requirement to declare one’s intent to convert to the state and face a public inquiry is a direct challenge to the “zone of choice and self-determination” that Puttaswamy sought to protect.
The central constitutional question is no longer merely about the right to propagate (the Stainislaus issue), but about whether the state can impose such a burdensome and invasive procedure on a deeply personal choice without violating the right to privacy and liberty (the Puttaswamy issue).
The Path forward
The Mustafa judgment is a significant outcome of a cautious judicial approach, focused strictly on the letter of the law. It provides immediate, tangible relief and establishes crucial procedural checks without precipitating a direct constitutional confrontation. Its legacy will be to provide the accused and their counsel with specific, effective legal arguments to challenge prosecutions at the very initial stage, thereby helping to curb potential abuses of the law.
However, the larger battle remains. The core provisions of the KPRFR Act and its sister statutes, such as their broad definitions, discriminatory clauses, and invasive procedures, are yet to be tested on the anvil of the Constitution. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to reconcile the state’s interest in preventing coercive conversions with the individual’s fundamental rights to privacy, liberty, equality, and conscience. The Mustafa judgment is a crucial first chapter in this unfolding constitutional matter, a stabilizing judgment that clarifies important procedural grounds while the principal constitutional adjudication awaits.
(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)
Related
https://cjp.org.in/cjp-other-rights-groups-challenge-maharashtra-govt-gr-setting-up-a-committee-to-monitor-inter-faith-marriages/