Lucknow, Dec. 9 -- Coming down heavily on the police for overreach in a religious conversion case, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has observed that distributing the Bible and preaching religion is not a crime. The court sought a reply from the state authorities on various points in the matter. A division bench of Justice Abdul Moin and Justice Babita Rani passed the order recently on a petition filed by Ram Kewal Bharati and other persons. They sought directives to quash an FIR registered under Sections 352, 351(3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 and Sections 3 and 5(1) of the U.P. Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021 lodged on August 17, 2025 against them at the Dhammaur police station of Sultanpur district. The court said, "Learned AGA has failed to indicate and obviously would not be able to indicate that distribution of Bible is a crime. Further, even preaching of a religion has not been prescribed as a crime anywhere. Thus, the sine qua non to invocation of Section 3 of the Act, 2021 prima facie would be coming forward of a 'person' to allege that either he has been converted to any other religion or is being coerced or given some allurement to convert to some other religion which is patently missing at the time of lodging of the FIR...." The complainant, Manoj Kumar Singh, stated in the FIR that he received information about the petitioners having called a prayer meeting and that they were giving out the Bible to various Dalits and poor persons, including women and children, and tried to convert them. When the complainant, along with others, reached the prayer meeting, he found that the petitioners had installed an LED screen in their verandah and were preaching the tenets of Christianity and were converting the people. The counsel for the petitioners submitted that a patently false FIR has been lodged against them. Observing that in case the FIR is being lodged under the provisions of the Act 2021, the authorities would have to strictly adhere to its provisions, the court clarified that merely distributing the Bible and preaching religion is not a criminal offence. "....it is prima facie apparent that the authorities have bent themselves backward in order to arrest the petitioner(s) even though it is not known as to how the complainant had got information about any offence as alleged in the FIR having come to his knowledge. These are all strange facts which need to be explained by the authorities more particularly when it is the life and liberty of the petitioner(s) which is involved," the court said. The court directed the state counsel to address the following points while filing the counter-affidavit (reply to the petition): (a) as to from where he (the complainant) got the information of the petitioners being engaged in the offence for which the FIR has been lodged, (b) as to from where he managed to collect the people to accompany him to the house of the accused, (c) in case he barges into the house of a third person accompanied by several persons as to what offence has been committed by the petitioners in trying to stop him from barging into their house and as to how the offence under Sections 352 and 351(3) of the BNS can be said to be made out against the accused, and (d) his criminal history, if any. With this order, the court directed to list the matter after six weeks for the next hearing.MANOJ KUMAR SINGH...