Hindu minor lured into a relationship by a Muslim man who pretended to be Hindu; harassed and assaulted for refusing to convert to Islam
Chhibramau, Uttar Pradesh, India 
1 July, 2022
Case Summary
A Hindu minor girl in Chhibramau, Uttar Pradesh, was deceived into a relationship with false promises of marriage by a Muslim man who concealed his identity to lure her. He extracted money from her, subjected her to sexual abuse, and demanded she convert to Islam when she asked him to honour his promise of marriage. When her family complained, a group of six people associated with the Muslim man attacked her with such severity that she required hospitalisation. The victim was a minor from a village in the Talagram police station area who had moved to a rented room in the Sarafan neighbourhood of Chhibramau to prepare for employment examinations. Approximately two and a half years before the complaint was filed, Aman Siddiqui approached her in the locality, concealed his Muslim identity by using a false Hindu name, and exploited her trust by promising marriage. Under the cover of this false promise, Aman Siddiqui extracted money from her and entered into a sexual relationship with her. She was a minor at the time. The relationship continued on the basis of the marriage promise he had made to her. When the victim discovered his true identity, she confronted him and pressed him on the question of marriage. He told her plainly that he would not marry her. He then stated that if she wanted marriage, she would have to convert to Islam and accept the faith as her own. On 30 December, Aman Siddiqui's father, Raheesh Siddiqui, came to her and slammed her head against a wall. A group comprising 4 people (Hasni, Vishal, Imran, and Muskan) then beat her with severe brutality. The assault was so serious that she had to be admitted to a hospital for treatment. When she subsequently approached the police station to file a complaint, she was threatened with death. The victim's mother filed a report against six named individuals: Aman Siddiqui, his father Raheesh Siddiqui, Hasni, Vishal, Imran, and Muskan. Chhibramau Kotwal Vishnukant Tiwari confirmed that a case had been registered against the accused on the basis of the written complaint and that an investigation had been launched.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is "Predatory Proselytisation". The sub-category for this case is "Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation and subtle indoctrination". The tertiary categories here are "Conversion of minor", "Rape and sexual assault/harassment" and "Family claims grooming". 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. Another sub-category for 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. 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 primary category for this case is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category for this case is "Man pretends to be Hindu". When a non-Hindu man pretends to be a Hindu to deceive a Hindu woman into a relationship, the act is seen as triggered by malafide intentions. In some cases, the woman eventually accepts the man’s original religious identity and converts after the man’s identity is revealed. These cases could be argued as cases of religious brainwashing and a result of the pressure a woman feels after getting into a relationship with a man. The woman, it can be argued, also changed her religious identity because of the stigma she believes she might face if she chooses to walk out of a deceptive relationship. However, for the purpose of documenting hate crimes, the cases in this subcategory are limited to those where there is explicit violence aimed at religious conversion against the wishes of the victim (force-feeding beef, blackmailing with intimate videos, rape on refusal to convert, etc), or if the woman herself complains of the man’s religious deception. In such cases, it is established that the deception of the non-Hindu man had a specific aim of religious conversion or targeting of the victim due to her Hindu religious identity, therefore, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. Another sub-category for this case is "Brainwashed and/or groomed". 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. One other sub-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 that this case qualifies for 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. This case qualifies as a religiously motivated hate crime in which a Hindu minor girl was systematically identified, deceived, financially exploited, sexually abused, and then subjected to severe physical violence when she refused to convert to Islam. The perpetrator, Aman Siddiqui, concealed his Muslim identity from the outset and constructed an entirely false persona to gain access to a vulnerable Hindu minor living alone and far from her family. The concealment of religious identity is the first and foundational religious marker of this case. Aman Siddiqui did not approach the victim as himself. He assumed a false name specifically to disguise his Muslim identity and present himself as someone the victim, a Hindu minor, would trust and accept. This act of identity concealment was deliberate and premeditated. It establishes that his Muslim identity was something he understood would have been a barrier, and that he consciously removed that barrier through deception in order to gain access to a Hindu girl. The grooming of the victim over approximately two and a half years is the second religious marker. The victim was a minor living alone in a rented room, preparing for employment examinations, and separated from her family. She was in a position of heightened vulnerability. Aman Siddiqui identified these conditions and exploited them systematically, cultivating her trust over an extended period before extracting money from her and subjecting her to sexual abuse. The duration and deliberateness of this process confirm that this was not an opportunistic crime. It was a structured campaign of predatory grooming directed at a Hindu minor. The victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. The fact that the perpetrator deliberately targeted a minor Hindu girl exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, which is a blatant act of religious hate. The sexual abuse of the victim is the third religious marker. The victim was a minor throughout the period of abuse. The sexual relationship was initiated and sustained through a false promise of marriage made under a false identity. Her consent, to the extent it existed at all, was manufactured through sustained religious and personal deception. A minor cannot give informed consent to a relationship built on a fabricated identity, and the sexual abuse that resulted from that deception was therefore a direct consequence of the religiously motivated fraud. The demand for conversion upon exposure is the most explicit religious marker in this case. When the victim discovered Aman Siddiqui's true identity and pressed him on the question of marriage, he did not attempt to continue the deception or offer an alternative. He told her plainly that he would not marry her unless she converted to Islam. The demand for conversion was not incidental to the relationship. It was its destination. The entire preceding period of grooming, financial exploitation, and sexual abuse had been building toward this moment, in which a Hindu minor would be presented with a choice between abandoning her faith and losing the promised marriage. The violent assault on 30 December is the final and most brutal religious marker in this case. When the victim refused to comply and sought help by approaching the police, Aman Siddiqui's father, Raheesh Siddiqui, slammed her head against a wall. A group of five individuals then beat her with such ferocity that she required admission to the hospital. This violence was not a spontaneous reaction. It was a coordinated group response to the victim's refusal to convert and her decision to seek accountability. The involvement of Aman Siddiqui's family members and associates in the assault confirms that the pressure to convert and the punishment for refusing it extended beyond the individual perpetrator to his wider social circle. The subsequent death threats issued to the victim when she approached the police station represent a final attempt to silence her and prevent accountability. A Hindu minor who had been groomed, financially defrauded, sexually abused, subjected to conversion pressure, and beaten to hospitalisation was then told she would be killed if she pursued justice. This escalating pattern of harm, from deception to exploitation to violence to intimidation, reflects a total and sustained assault on the victim's Hindu identity, her bodily autonomy, and her right to seek protection. 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 tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred, not when it was reported. In this case, the incident spanned approximately five years with no single confirmed date. Therefore, the 2nd (the reporting date) has been used as the day, while the year and month have been recorded as July 2022, two and a half years prior. This date is indicative and used for documentation purposes only.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 5 to 10
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
