Hindu boy assaulted, threatened with death, forced to convert to Islam and undergo circumcision by his mother and her Muslim partner

Case ID : 0b67383 | Location : Khargone, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 2 March, 2024

Case ID : 0b67383

Khargone, Madhya Pradesh, India

2 March, 2024

Hindu boy assaulted, threatened with death, forced to convert to Islam and undergo circumcision by his mother and her Muslim partner

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Khargone district, Madhya Pradesh, a teenager accused his mother and a Muslim man of threatening and pressuring him to convert to Islam. Following the victim's complaint, Kasrawad police filed an FIR under the Madhya Pradesh Religious Freedom Act and the Indian Penal Code, subsequently arresting the accused. According to the complaint, after the teenager's father passed away, a Muslim man became involved with his mother. On March 3, the mother and the man pressured the teenager to convert to Islam, assaulting him when he refused. They also threatened to kill him. On July 1, the mother and the man again thrashed the teenager when he refused circumcision. The next day, the victim, accompanied by Hindu rights activists, filed a complaint at the police station. TI MS Romed confirmed the arrests of the mother and the Muslim man.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

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. This case is a distinct case of a religiously motivated hate crime as the perpetrator tried to use the tactics of intimidation to convert a minor boy to Islam. Though circumcision is not a prerequisite to converting to Islam, however, it is often seen that it is used as an intimidatory tactic to make the Hindu victim abandon his/her professed religion and adopt the religion of the perpetrator. This sort of harassment is rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and is therefore documented as a religiously motivated hate crime in this Hindu hate tracker.