NOIDA: Police officers probing the conversion row have started re-investigating a three-year-old complaint about a minor youth who left home without informing anybody.
Now 20 and believed to have named himself Rehan Ansari, the youth’s family said he had posted recent pictures of him sporting a beard on Facebook and a few messages in Arabic.
His parents, who live in Sector 93, said they were almost certain he had converted himself.
The youth is the second among four siblings.
His father does iron fabrication work while his mother is a homemaker.
His mother said when they lived in Nithari village, they had come in contact with a Muslim family who were also in the same iron fabrication business.
“We would visit each other frequently.
However, we had a professional dispute with them and severed all ties.
A few years later, they invited us to their younger daughter’s wedding and we attended it,” the youth’s mother said.
After the families resumed talking to each other, the youth allegedly befriended one of the daughters in the other family.
“She is a mother of two but estranged from her husband.
They started chatting on social media and most of their discussions would revolve around religion.
He would address her as an elder sister and had asked her a few questions about her religion,” the mother said.
The youth, she said, had started lying about his whereabouts.
“He was a brilliant student and had scored above 490 in all his ITI semesters.
He was very keen on training with a car sales platform.
However, we later learnt that he had been actually working there.
He would lie to us and would go somewhere else during working hours,” she added.
After he suddenly left home on May 5, 2018, his parents rushed to the office of the car sales platform where he claimed to be undergoing training.
“They did not have any answer.
Recently, we checked his Facebook profile.
He had changed his name to Rehan Ansari and 90% of his friends were from Kairana.
He had been posting messages in Arabic.
A friend read those messages and said they were all about religion,” the youth’s mother said.
The family lodged a complaint at Phase II police station.
When there was little progress in the case, they said, the youth’s relatives approached the offices of the DM and SP.
The conversion row has rekindled the police’s interest in the three-year-old case.
DCP (central Noida) Harish Chander told TOI they had spoken to the youth’s family in detail.
Since the youth was a minor when he was reported missing in 2018, teams have been formed to find him, he added.
“The family is almost certain that their son has converted and could be living somewhere in Kairana.
But we need more evidence to establish that.
We are examining all Facebook chats and evidence that are available with them,” Chander said.
Sujeet Upadhyay, the SHO of Phase II police station, where the complaint was lodged, said they had sought the cyber cell’s help about the youth’s social media accounts.