Hindu woman sexually exploited, pressured for conversion and nikah by Muslim man posing as Hindu; threatened with death upon refusal
Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, India 
9 April, 2024
Case Summary
In the Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit Hindu woman was deceived into a relationship, sexually assaulted, and threatened to convert her religion by a Muslim man named Abdul Hadi Pathan, who pretended to be a Hindu. According to reports, the victim, who belonged to the Balai (Scheduled Caste) community, came into contact with the accused, Abdul Hadi Pathan, a resident of Nandra village in Khargone district, at a mobile phone shop near Maheshwar bus stand in Dhar district in 2024. During this time, the accused introduced himself as a Hindu man named Aditya Thakur and gradually built a relationship with her under the pretext of marriage. On 10 December 2025, the Muslim accused took the victim to a hotel near Maheshwar Phata in Dhamnod. At the hotel, he sexually assaulted her against her will. When she resisted, he pacified her with repeated promises of marriage. Following this, he continued to maintain contact and reinforced the promise of marriage to keep the Hindu woman under his influence. He continued to sexually exploit her on multiple occasions under the same pretext, including at another lodge, while sustaining the deception regarding his identity On 10 April 2026, the Muslim man again took the Hindu woman to a hotel in Dhamnod. During this visit, he sexually assaulted her again. While at the hotel, the Hindu woman found a photocopy of an Aadhaar card (a government-issued identity document) in his possession. The document revealed that his real name was Abdul Hadi Pathan and that he was a Muslim. After discovering his real identity, the victim confronted him. The accused admitted that he was Muslim and began pressuring her to convert her religion. He threatened her to convert to Islam as a condition for marriage and claimed that he would only marry her through nikah, an Islamic marriage ceremony. When the Hindu woman refused, the Muslim man threatened to kill her. The threats were used to force her to accept conversion and continue the relationship. Subsequently, the victim approached the Dhamnod police station with her family and filed a complaint. A case was registered against Abdul Hadi Pathan under charges including cheating, rape, criminal intimidation, provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act, and sections of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act. The police recorded her statement before a female officer and initiated legal proceedings. The police began an investigation into the case and initiated efforts to locate the perpetrator. A search operation was carried out to trace Abdul Hadi Pathan. As of the date of writing this report, the investigation was ongoing.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category in this case is - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first subcategory under this is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category under this is: Name changed. 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary categories being - Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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 sub-category selected here is - Forced conversion before marriage, with the tertiary category being - Forced to do Nikah. 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. The other subcategory selected 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. This incident qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime because a Muslim man deliberately targeted a Hindu Dalit woman, concealed his religious identity, and built a relationship based on deception. He subjected her to sexual violence and later pressured her to convert to Islam and undergo nikah. The abuse escalated when she resisted, leading to threats to her life. The sequence of actions showed that her Hindu identity, along with her caste vulnerability, was central to the targeting. Firstly, the accused initially approached the Dalit Hindu woman while presenting himself as a Hindu man. The accused deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with a Hindu woman. This itself is a clear manifestation of bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. By concealing his true identity, he exploited her trust, targeting her under false pretences. This indicates a premeditated intent to manipulate her based on her religious background. In cases like these, the tactic of adopting a false Hindu identity to manipulate and "ensnare" a Hindu individual is not just an act of personal betrayal but can also be interpreted as an expression of disdain or disregard for Hinduism and its customs that reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. This act was significant because it involved deliberate misrepresentation of religious identity to gain trust. By posing as a Hindu, he removed any initial barrier that might have existed due to religious differences. This deception specifically targeted her identity as a Hindu woman, making her believe she was entering a relationship within her own religious community. This showed that her Hindu identity was recognised and deliberately bypassed through false representation in order to gain access and control. Secondly, the accused built a long-term relationship with the Hindu Dalit woman over approximately two years. This period involved sustained emotional manipulation and control. This was religiously significant because the relationship was later used as a foundation to introduce demands for conversion. The grooming process created dependence and reduced her ability to resist. This showed how her identity as a Hindu woman was exploited through emotional conditioning before introducing religious coercion. Thirdly, the accused sexually assaulted the victim multiple times after gaining her trust and used the promise of marriage to maintain control. These exploitations were not random acts of crime; rather, they functioned as religiously motivated tools aimed at humiliating and dominating a Hindu woman because of her faith, as he later pressured her for conversion. The target was not the victim as an individual, but her Hindu identity. The specific focus on her Hindu identity in the commission of these acts highlights the religious hatred underlying the crime, making it a religiously motivated offence. Fourth, after the accused's real identity was exposed, the accused demanded that the victim convert to Islam as a precondition for marriage, claiming that he would only marry her through nikah. In Islam, marriage to a non-Muslim partner is prohibited, which is why she was pressured for religious conversion. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another was a direct attack on her religious identity and dignity. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime Fifth, when the victim refused to convert, the perpetrator threatened to kill her. This act was significant because it showed a direct escalation from coercion to intimidation. The threat was not random but linked specifically to her refusal to abandon her religion. This demonstrated that violence and fear were used as tools to force a Hindu Dalit woman to comply with religious demands. The sequence of deception, grooming, sexual violence, forced religious pressure, and threats established a clear and continuous pattern. Each stage was connected and reinforced the next, moving from identity concealment to coercion and intimidation. The victim’s identity as a Hindu Dalit woman remained central throughout, shaping how and why she was targeted on the wider Hindu community, particularly among Dalit families, by creating fear around targeted deception and coercion tied to religious identity. It reinforced concerns that vulnerable Hindu women could be approached through false identities and later subjected to pressure to abandon their faith under threat and abuse. 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 exact date of the initial contact is not specified in the available information, and only the year 2024 is mentioned. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date, 10 April 2024, as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 10 April 2026, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.
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
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
