Minor Hindu girl lured and abducted for forced religious conversion by Muslim man in Etah, Uttar Pradesh
Etah, Uttar Pradesh, India 
27 March, 2026
Case Summary
In Etah, Uttar Pradesh, a 16-year-old Hindu girl was lured and abducted by a Muslim man named Hasan for the purpose of forced religious conversion. According to media reports, this incident came to light when the girl's family and dozens of Hindu residents of the neighbourhood submitted a written complaint to Etah's newly appointed Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Elamaran Ji. They appealed for the girl's safe recovery and expressed fears of something untoward happening. As per the victim's family, the incident occurred on 28 March 2026 when the girl went with her siblings and friends to watch a Hindu procession held in the city. When she did not return home late in the evening, the family informed the police of the incident. They stated that a Muslim youth named Hasan, son of Mahfooz, a resident of Kashiram Colony, had abducted her. The victim's mother stated that the Muslim youth had lured her minor daughter away for forced conversion or that something untoward might happen to her. Fearing this, she demanded immediate action from the SSP. Based on the family's written complaint, the Kotwali Nagar police registered a First Information Report (FIR) against the named accused. Police launched efforts to recover the girl and searched for the accused. Senior Superintendent of Police, Etah, Ilamaran Ji, assured the victims that police teams had been dispatched to safely recover the girl. He said that she would be found soon, and legal action would be taken in this case.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected 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. The other subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories selected are- Conversion of Minor, 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. This case is a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime because a minor Hindu girl was lured and abducted for the purpose of forced religious conversion by a Muslim man named Hasan. The act of abducting and luring a minor Hindu girl specifically to strip her of her faith amounted to a crime fuelled by religious animosity, targeting her vulnerability to erase her Hindu identity. The victim's family watched in horror as their daughter vanished during a joyous Hindu procession, a sacred moment twisted into terror by the Muslim perpetrator, who viewed Hinduism as something to be eradicated. It is first important to state that the victim was a minor, just 16 years old. This meant the element of consent and genuine change of heart was absent from the outset. Minors, due to their youth and immaturity, prove particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion; they lack the life experience to grasp the lifelong implications of abandoning their ancestral religion. The Muslim perpetrator purposely exploited this vulnerability, ensnaring the girl during a moment of innocent celebration. Since this case exemplifies coercion and manipulation to enforce religious conversion, it constitutes a blatant act of a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus. Taking a minor Hindu girl away through deception from the safety of her home and family for forced conversion amounted to profound harassment. The victim was wrenched from her secure confines into an alien, isolating space, all alone and exposed, solely to shatter her religious roots. This deliberate isolation stripped her of protection, amplifying the terror of cultural erasure and marking the act as a religiously motivated hate crime that preyed on her innocence. Pressuring a Hindu girl to convert to Islam exemplified raw religious animosity by directly violating her religious autonomy. Such coercion dismissed her right to follow her faith freely, aggressively imposing another religion, Islam, against her will and trampling the sacred freedom every individual holds to define their spiritual path. The perpetrator targeted her devotion to Hinduism, seeking to shatter it through force and manipulation, which exposed a deep contempt for her beliefs and a drive to enforce religious conformity. This forceful pressure transformed a personal faith choice into subjugation, underscoring the hate crime's aim to obliterate her religious identity and autonomy entirely. Overall, this entire incident amounted to a clear case of a hate crime driven by religious bias and animosity. From the lure during a Hindu event to the abduction for conversion, every step reflected premeditated hostility towards Hindus, exploiting a Hindu child's trust to advance an anti-Hindu objective and inflicting intergenerational trauma on her family. Given that this case met several parameters of a hate crime, it has been added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker.
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 filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
