Hindu woman sexually exploited under false promise of marriage, forced to convert to Islam
Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh, India 
22 March, 2023
Case Summary
A Hindu woman, belonging to the Scheduled Caste community, from the Bachhrawan area of Raebareli district, Uttar Pradesh, was sexually exploited for three years under a false promise of marriage by a Muslim youth named Mohammed Rehan from Kundauli, Bachhrawan. The accused subsequently pressured her to convert to Islam as a condition for the marriage he had promised, and upon her refusal, subjected her to verbal abuse and death threats. Mohammed Rehan was arrested by Bachhrawan police near Sharda Canal Bridge on March 22, 2026 (Sunday), following a trap laid on the instructions of Superintendent of Police Ravi Kumar, and was sent to judicial custody following the registration of a case against him under the anti-conversion law and relevant sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act. The Hindu woman had been living separately from her husband for three years when she met Mohammed Rehan. Taking advantage of her vulnerable, isolated circumstances, Rehan offered her emotional support and assured her that he would marry her in the future. Using this false promise of support and marriage as a foundation, Rehan systematically exploited the Hindu woman physically over a sustained period of three years. When the Hindu woman began pressing him for marriage, Rehan revealed his true intentions by placing a condition on the marriage, demanding that she convert to Islam before he would agree to marry her. When the Hindu woman clearly refused to abandon her Hindu faith and convert to Islam, Rehan responded with verbal abuse and explicit death threats directed at her for her refusal to comply with his conversion demand. On the instructions of Superintendent of Police Ravi Kumar, Bachhrawan police laid a trap using informant intelligence and apprehended Mohammed Rehan near Sharda Canal Bridge on Sunday. Station house officer Shyam Pal confirmed that a case had been registered against Rehan under the anti-conversion law and relevant sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act. Mohammed Rehan was sent to judicial custody following his arrest. Police confirmed that the investigation was ongoing and that they were examining whether Rehan had been involved in similar incidents previously. The local administration confirmed its commitment to delivering justice to the victim and preventing such crimes from recurring.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category for this case is "Brainwashed and/or groomed". The tertiary categories here are "Rape and sexual assault/harassment", Victim says she was brainwashed/groomed" and "Pattern of targetting Hindus". In our database, we have not added incidents where women have converted to another religion of their free will and no allegations of forced/involuntary conversion have been made. However, there are certain cases of conversion where the consent itself is a result of the brainwashing or grooming of a minor by the non-Hindu perpetrator trying to victimise a woman for her Hindu religious identity. The phenomenon of grooming points to non-Hindu perpetrators identifying their Hindu victims’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them over months and sometimes years, to extract the supposed ‘consent’ in order to convert their religion. In most cases of grooming, the victims are minors or the grooming started when the victim was a minor. In other cases of grooming, the non-Hindu perpetrator brainwashes and grooms a minor victim to extract their trust and then proceeds to rape them repeatedly with the intent of converting them to their faith. It is pertinent to understand here that when the victim is a minor, the ‘consent’ to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult itself is redundant – addressed by POCSO. While every case of conversion of a minor and incidents of establishing a physical relationship with a minor by an adult is a crime, for the purpose of this database, a case would be considered a hate crime only if there is a distinct religious angle to the grooming. For example, in the UK, if a Hindu minor is targeted by Pakistani grooming gangs, it would be considered a hate crime because the victims are specifically targeted owing to their non-Muslim religious identity with the perpetrators being Muslim. In other cases, if a Hindu minor is brainwashed into entering a physical relationship with the non-Hindu adult perpetrator and the family alleges grooming/brainwashing of the minor to convert her religion, it would form a part of this database. If the victim is a Hindu adult, the case would form a part of this database only if the victim herself says that she was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. However, if the victim is deceased (murdered or otherwise), the case would form a part of this database if her family/friends provided testimony that the victim was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. Since these crimes have a distinct religious angle where the victim is being targeted owing to her Hindu religious identity, these cases are considered a hate crime. Another category for this case is "Forced conversion before marriage". In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. In such cases, typically, two patterns emerge. First, when the relationship is consensual, and the religious identity of the perpetrator is known to the Hindu woman in the relationship, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. The second is when the woman gets into a marriage with the man pretending to share her faith. Later, when the truth is revealed, the man starts pressuring the woman to convert her religion and give up her religious identity. In both the situations, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurizing the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. One other sub-category for this case is "Assault or threat upon refusal to convert". When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. Another primary category for this case is "Predatory Proselytisation". The sub-category here 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. 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. Another sub-category here is "Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation and subtle indoctrination". The tertiary category here is "Victim was brainwashed/groomed". Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime on the basis that Mohammed Rehan, a Muslim youth from Kundauli, Bachhrawan, Raebareli district, Uttar Pradesh deliberately targeted a vulnerable Hindu woman who was living separately from her husband, systematically groomed her over three years through false promises of emotional support and marriage, sexually exploited her throughout that period, and subsequently revealed his true intention of forcing her to convert to Islam as a precondition for the marriage he had been promising, subjecting her to verbal abuse and death threats when she refused to abandon her Hindu faith. The case reflected a deliberate, sustained, and multi-dimensional predatory operation directed specifically at a vulnerable Hindu woman, exploiting every dimension of her personal vulnerability as an instrument of sexual exploitation and religious coercion. The foundation of Mohammed Rehan's predatory operation was the deliberate and calculated identification and targeting of a Hindu Scheduled Caste woman at her most vulnerable, living separately from her husband and isolated from her primary support network. The deliberate targeting of a Hindu woman in this specific condition of personal vulnerability reflected a conscious and predatory choice to exploit her emotional isolation and need for support as the primary instrument of grooming and manipulation. By offering her emotional support and false promises of marriage at the precise moment of her greatest vulnerability, Rehan created a false sense of safety, trust, and dependency that he then exploited systematically over three years to carry out sustained sexual exploitation and ultimately to impose his conversion demands. The Hindu woman's own complaint to the police confirmed that she had been deliberately drawn into the relationship through Rehan's false promises of support and marriage, reflecting her recognition that the entire relationship had been built on a calculated and sustained strategy of psychological manipulation directed at her specific vulnerabilities. The grooming carried out by Mohammed Rehan over three years reflected a deliberate and sustained strategy of psychological manipulation designed to create a state of complete emotional dependency in the Hindu Scheduled Caste woman. Grooming at this scale and duration is not a passive or incidental process but a calculated and organised campaign of psychological manipulation in which the perpetrator systematically shapes the victim's perceptions, emotions, and decisions over an extended period, creating a state of trust and dependency that makes resistance increasingly difficult over time. The three-year duration of the grooming operation confirmed the depth and sustained nature of the psychological manipulation directed at the Hindu woman, reflecting a premeditated and patient predatory strategy in which the full extent of Rehan's intentions was deliberately concealed until the moment when the victim's emotional dependency had been sufficiently established to make the imposition of conversion demands appear as an unavoidable condition of the relationship she had come to depend upon. The sexual exploitation of the Hindu woman over three years under the false promise of marriage constituted a sustained and serious act of sexual assault directed at a vulnerable Hindu woman whose consent had been obtained through deliberate and sustained deception. The false promise of marriage used by Rehan to facilitate the sustained sexual exploitation of the victim was not merely a romantic assurance but a calculated instrument of coercion designed to maintain the victim's compliance with the sexual exploitation by creating the expectation of a future legitimate relationship. The three-year duration of the sexual exploitation reflected the extent to which the false promise of marriage had successfully maintained the woman's compliance and emotional dependency, confirming the deliberate and premeditated nature of the sexual exploitation as an integral dimension of the broader predatory operation. The revelation of Rehan's conversion demand after three years of sustained grooming and sexual exploitation reflected the true and ultimate objective of the predatory operation directed at the Hindu woman. By waiting until three years of grooming and sexual exploitation had created a state of maximum emotional dependency and vulnerability before revealing his demand that she convert to Islam as a precondition for marriage, Rehan timed his conversion demand to coincide with the moment when the Hindu woman was most deeply invested in the relationship and therefore most susceptible to conversion pressure. The deliberate timing of the conversion demand, revealed only after three years of sustained manipulation and exploitation, reflected a calculated and patient predatory strategy in which the conversion of the victim was the planned and ultimate objective from the outset of the relationship. The sustained harassment, verbal abuse, and explicit death threats directed at the woman when she clearly refused to abandon her Hindu faith and convert to Islam reflected a deliberate and calculated strategy of using violence and the threat of lethal harm as instruments of religious coercion. The escalation from three years of psychological grooming and sexual exploitation to explicit death threats upon her refusal to convert reflected a premeditated willingness to use any means necessary, including lethal violence, to force the Hindu woman into abandoning her Hindu faith. The deliberate targeting of a vulnerable Hindu Scheduled Caste woman who was living separately from her husband, combined with the sustained and patient three-year grooming and exploitation operation and the ultimate revelation of a forced conversion demand, reflected a calculated and organised predatory pattern that the investigating authorities recognised as potentially extending beyond this single victim to other vulnerable Hindu women in the area. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a crime occurred, or a victim's ordeal began, rather than when the media reported it. In this case, the exact date on which Mohammed Rehan first made contact with the Hindu Scheduled Caste woman and began grooming her is not confirmed in the sources. The article was published on March 23, 2026, and the sources confirm that the grooming and sexual exploitation began approximately three years prior to the article's publication. Therefore, March 23, 2023, has been chosen as the indicative incident date as it represents the approximate date on which the Hindu Scheduled Caste woman's ordeal began, based on the three-year period of grooming and sexual exploitation confirmed in the sources.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 1
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
