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Debojyoti Das, secretary of VHP Birbhum district said: \u201cThe main purpose is to rescue these girls because Muslim men are tagetting Hindu girls to capture their properties. These are clear cases of love jihad.\u201d VHP has a special wing, the dharmaprashar<\/em> branch entirely devoted to this work. If the girls are minors we can easily rescue them with police help, but we also have to immediately arrange their marriage so they cannot run away to their Muslim husbands again.<\/p>\n For adult Hindu women who have eloped with adult Muslim men, VHP authorities have other, complex modus operandi. \u201cIt works. We handle anything between 10 to 15 cases in Rampurhat and the adjoining villages every year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Take the case of Arabinda Lek\u2019s daughter, Parul (names changed). Right after she sat for her Higher Secondary examinations, Parul eloped with a Muslim boy from the neighbourhood. Lek lives in the Lawpara village of Gokholmati area of Birbhum\u2019s Rampurhat block II.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen my daughter eloped and married a Muslim boy, police refused to help because she was an adult,\u201d Lek said. \u201cI was called to the police station. But my daughter said she wouldn\u2019t return with me. I was shocked. My own daughter stood there and told me firmly that she was married to a Muslim man and wouldn\u2019t come back to me again.\u201d<\/p>\n A desperate Lek approached the VHP\u2019s Debojyoti Das. \u201cI advised the girl\u2019s family to trick the couple into believing they had accepted the marriage,\u201d Das said.<\/p>\n It definitely worked. When the Lek family encouraged their daughter and son-in-law to visit them, the family was socially ostricised by other Hindu neighbours. \u201cWe were mocked at, not allowed to use the public tube well. A neighbour aimed a piece of brick at my wife from the adjoining terrace,\u201d Arabinda Lek remembers. All this for “accepting” their daughter’s marriage with a Muslim man.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring one of her visits to our place, I sent her off to Kolkata. And then we didn\u2019t let her return to her Muslim husband again,\u201d Lek said. A Hindu boy was quickly found and Parul was married off.<\/p>\n Parul\u2019s husband is now in class XI and perhaps not yet 21 years of age (says Lek), the legal age of marriage for men in India according to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act.<\/p>\n \u201cI have promised him that I\u2019ll ensure he is established in life. Let him complete his studies first,\u201d Arabinda Lek says. Arabinda Lek owns several cars and agricultural land, which, he feels, was the main target of the Muslim boy with whom his daughter had eloped. “The Muslim boy was after my property,” Lek says. Somehow, he feels the same logic does not apply to the Hindu boy who has now married his daughter.<\/p>\n