Twelve Interfaith Couples Asked for Protection. Here Is What the Court Said

Twelve interfaith couples went to the Allahabad High Court asking for police protection. They said their families or communities had threatened them. Seven petitions involved Muslim women living with Hindu men. Five involved Hindu women living with Muslim men.

The central question was straightforward: does Uttar Pradesh's anti-conversion law make an interfaith relationship unlawful by itself? The 2021 law prohibits conversion caused by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or fraud, including conversion connected to marriage or a relationship in the nature of marriage.

The State opposed the petitions with a substantive legal argument. It said the couples' live-in relationships fell within the Explanation to Section 3 as relationships in the nature of marriage, and that the couples had not followed the prior-declaration and post-conversion procedure in Sections 8 and 9. On that basis, the State argued that Sections 3 and 5 applied and the court should not protect the relationships.

The court rejected that argument because Sections 3 and 5 require a conversion or attempted conversion. Section 2(c) defines conversion as renouncing one's religion and adopting another. The petitioners said they continued to follow their own religions, and no FIR or complaint alleging that any petitioner's religion had been converted or that conversion had been attempted was lodged against any of them.

On 23 February 2026, Justice Vivek Kumar Singh held that interfaith marriage is not prohibited by the Act and that Sections 8 and 9 apply when a person wishes to convert. The court said a person cannot be forced to convert for marriage or for living together in a live-in relationship.

The court connected a person's choice of partner to Article 21 of the Constitution, which protects life and personal liberty. It directed the police to examine any application for protection, check the petitioners' ages and the substance of their allegations, and act in accordance with law to protect life, limb and liberty.

The judgment did not strike down UP's anti-conversion law. It did not prevent investigation of forced or fraudulent conversion, and it expressly said the order would not obstruct any lawful investigation already pending. Its narrower point was that an interfaith relationship, without conversion or an attempted conversion, did not itself establish an offence under the Act.

That distinction matters. The State put a real statutory argument before the court; the court rejected it by reading the offence provisions together with the Act's definition of conversion and the record in these twelve cases.

The ruling concerns these twelve petitions in Uttar Pradesh. It does not decide the separate Supreme Court challenge to anti-conversion laws in several states. It also does not prove that every similar complaint will be handled in the same way.

Primary-source verification: Elephant Lens checked the complete 40-page judgment in Noori And Another v. State of U.P. and 4 Others, neutral citation 2026:AHC:39447, delivered on 23 February 2026. The State's argument is recorded at paragraphs 8-10 and 20-24; the court's conversion analysis at paragraphs 28-30; and the operative limits and directions at paragraphs 48-57. The copy checked was the digitally signed judgment linked from Verdictum's report.