Maulvi rapes married Hindu woman of Jabalpur at knife-point, forcibly marries and converts her to Islam

Case ID : 0b66d0a | Location : Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 29 June, 2021

Case ID : 0b66d0a

Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

29 June, 2021

Maulvi rapes married Hindu woman of Jabalpur at knife-point, forcibly marries and converts her to Islam

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, a Maulvi named Dilshad Mansuri is accused of raping a married Hindu woman at knife-point. He forcibly married her later and converted her to Islam. Reportedly, the father of the accused Muslim also raped the woman several times. On June 2, 2024, members of the Hindu organisation Dharmasena reached the Adhartal police station with the victim and lodged a complaint. According to the police, Dilshan Mansuri, a resident of Anand Nagar, used to visit the house of the Hindu woman living in Gohalpur police station area. On June 30, 2021, when the woman's husband was not at home, Dilshan reached there and raped her by showing a knife. He also recorded an obscene video of the act. He then started blackmailing the woman into a physical relationship by threatening to broadcast the video on the internet. In July 2021, the accused took her to Balaghat on the pretext of getting her a job. Here, with the help of a Maulvi, he forcibly converted and married her. Till this time, the woman had not divorced her Hindu husband. The police registered a case against the accused youth, his father, as well as the Maulvi who got the conversion done in Balaghat, under various sections including rape, conversion and misconduct.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The sub-category under 'Predatory Proselytisation' relevant in this case is 'Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion'. Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The details of this case reveal that the Muslim perpetrator, at first enticed the Hindu victim on the pretext of getting her a job. Then to alienate the Hindu victim from her professed faith, the accused inflicted torture on her. She was raped on gun point and further blackmailed with her private pictures. She was forced to convert and marry a Muslim man, despite being already married to a person of her faith. All this was done because the perpetrator wanted her to renounce her faith and accept Islam. Since the motivating factor of the crime was the religious identity of the victim and the accused employed violence and intimidation to disenfranchise the victim from it, the case has been included under the sub-category 'harassment, threats, coercion for conversion' within the core category of 'predatory proselytisation'.