Mumbai/Hyderabad, Oct 19 (Hydnow): A photograph of Jesus Christ in a house, does not mean that a person has converted to Christianity, the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court said.
A division bench of Justices Prithviraj Chavan and Urmila Joshi Phalke on October 10 allowed a petition filed by a 17-year-old girl challenging a September 2022 order passed by the Amravati District Caste Certificate Scrutiny Committee invalidating her caste as ‘Mahar’.
The report of the vigilance officer (of the committee) needs to be discarded at the threshold as it is clear that the petitioner’s family follows the tradition of Buddhism, it said.
Invalidating her caste claim was taken after the committee’s vigilance cell conducted an inquiry and found that the petitioner’s father and grandfather had converted to Christianity and a photograph of Jesus Christ was found displayed in their home.
Since they converted to Christianity, they are included in the category of Other Backward Classes, the committee had said. The petitioner girl claimed the photograph of Jesus Christ was gifted to them by someone and they had just displayed it in their house.
The HC bench in its order noted there was absolutely no shred of evidence found by the vigilance cell during the inquiry that either the grandfather, father, or the petitioner had undergone baptism in order to buttress the committee’s contention that the petitioner’s family had converted to Christianity.
“No sane man will accept or believe that merely because there is a photograph of Jesus Christ in the house would ipso facto mean that a person had converted himself to Christianity, the court said. (Hydnow)
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