Minor Hindu boy kidnapped, held captive in a madrasa, forcibly converted to Islam, subjected to circumcision, and forced to eat beef

Case ID : 30a8337 | Location : Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 3 May, 2016

Case ID : 30a8337

Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India

3 May, 2016

Minor Hindu boy kidnapped, held captive in a madrasa, forcibly converted to Islam, subjected to circumcision, and forced to eat beef

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Family claims grooming

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A minor Hindu boy disappeared on his way to school and remained missing for eight years. His family searched for him across multiple districts in Uttar Pradesh and repeatedly approached the police, but found no trace of the child. When he was finally located in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, he was no longer living under his Hindu identity but under a Muslim identity. The Hindu child had been renamed, circumcised, force-fed beef, and placed inside a madrasa where he was studying Islamic religious texts. His family discovered that, despite the madrasa authorities knowing his real identity and family background, no effort had been made to reunite him with his Hindu family. In 2016, Vivek Kumar, a Class 5 Hindu boy, went missing while travelling to school when his family was living in Chandigarh, where his father, Virendra Kumar, worked in a factory. On the morning he disappeared, Vivek left for school but never reached the premises. His father immediately began searching for him and repeatedly visited police stations, spoke to Vivek’s friends, and followed every lead available to trace the missing Hindu child. Despite the family’s continuous efforts, no information about Vivek’s whereabouts emerged for years. The Hindu family gradually lost hope as the child remained untraceable. During this period, Vivek remained separated from his Hindu identity, his family, and his community. In October 2023, Virendra Kumar received a call from a police station in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, nearly 500 kilometres away from the family’s home in Hardoi district. Police officers asked him whether he had a son named Vivek Kumar. Virendra learned that his son had been located alive after eight years. When the Hindu boy was found, he was no longer identified as Vivek Kumar. He had been renamed Mohammed Umar and was residing as a student in a residential madrasa. The child had disappeared in March 2016 and was eventually traced to a madrasa after living there for several years under a changed religious identity. Subsequent inquiries revealed that after leaving home, Vivek had travelled towards a railway station where he came into contact with a group of older Muslim boys. He later boarded a train to Saharanpur. From there, he was taken to a madrasa. Inside the madrasa, the Hindu boy was renamed Mohammed Umar and was circumcised. He was forcibly converted to Islam and was also made to study the Quran and live as part of an Islamic religious institution. The madrasa authorities and linked individuals were aware of the child’s original identity. They knew his real name, the name of his father, and his native village in Hardoi district. Despite possessing this information, no steps were taken to contact the Hindu family or restore the child to his parents. The Hindu boy continued living under his altered identity for years. The truth surfaced only after Aadhaar biometric verification exposed the mismatch in identity records. Individuals associated with the madrasa attempted to obtain Aadhaar documentation for the boy under the name Mohammed Umar. During the biometric verification process, the system identified him as Vivek Kumar, son of Virendra Kumar, from Gauswa village in Hardoi district, Uttar Pradesh. This disclosure exposed the child’s original Hindu identity and alerted authorities to the discrepancy. An official at the passport centre informed a Hindu activist about the biometric mismatch. The activist subsequently alerted the police, following which officers contacted Virendra Kumar and informed him that his son had been located. After eight years of separation, Vivek finally returned home at the age of 18. Following his return, the family stated that the Hindu boy rarely spoke about the years spent away from home. His father stated that Vivek became angry when questioned about his past and avoided discussing what had happened inside the madrasa during those years. The family stated that they still did not know the full extent of what the Hindu child experienced during his disappearance. On 14 October 2023, Virendra Kumar registered a First Information Report at Charthawal Police Station in Muzaffarnagar against four Muslim individuals. The named individuals included a former village pradhan, two madrasa-linked maulvis, and an Aadhaar centre clerk. The First Information Report, numbered 347, included charges under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act. The case later drew the attention of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. Chairman Priyank Kanoongo visited the madrasa connected to the case but found the premises locked and deserted, with the children and management absent from the site. The incident triggered wider scrutiny regarding Hindu and other non-Muslim children studying in madrasas, which function as centres for Islamic religious education. In the months that followed, advisories were issued directing states to transfer non-Muslim students from government-aided and recognised madrasas to regular schools. The Uttar Pradesh government adopted the directive and instructed district magistrates to ensure compliance. Subsequently, non-Muslim children enrolled in government-funded madrasas were directed to be shifted to Basic Education Council schools for formal education. Children studying in madrasas not recognised by the Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Council were also ordered to be enrolled in regular council schools. The directives faced opposition from several Islamic organisations.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category - Predatory proselytisation. Within this, the subcategory selected for this case is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. Under this, the tertiary categories selected are - Conversion of minor, 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. The other 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. This case represents a clear example of a religiously motivated hate crime because the minor Hindu boy was targeted, abducted, and held hostage within an Islamic religious institution for the explicit purpose of forced conversion. The execution of this crime involved a systematic dismantling of the victim's identity through forced circumcision, the forced consumption of beef, and daily compulsory indoctrination in Islamic texts. Each of these acts demonstrates a profound undercurrent of religious animosity directed at eradicating the Hindu child's original faith and cultural identity. The deliberate nature of the confinement and the multi-layered abuse inflicted upon the victim confirm that this was not merely a criminal abduction, but an act of targeted hostility deeply rooted in anti-Hindu sentiment. Considering that the victim was a young child at the time of his abduction, any element of voluntary consent or genuine change of conscience is missing entirely from the outset. Minors are uniquely vulnerable to psychological manipulation, physical coercion, and environmental isolation due to their developmental stage. They lack the emotional maturity and long-term perspective required to comprehend the lifelong consequences of religious conversion, making them prime targets for predatory exploitation. The perpetrators deliberately seized upon this specific vulnerability, systematically isolating the child to enforce a change of faith, which characterises the act as a targeted hate crime driven by communal hostility toward the Hindu community. The acts of kidnapping a young Hindu boy, transporting him to a madrasa far from his home, and retaining him there under false identities for nearly a decade expose a structured pattern of communal bias. Removing a child from the protective environment of his parents, family, and wider religious community to place him forcibly within an alien religious institution constitutes a severe form of identity-based harassment. This prolonged captivity inflicted immense psychological distress and trauma on the minor, who was subjected to these conditions solely because of his Hindu identity, thereby meeting the definitive criteria of a religiously motivated hate crime. The systematic enforcement of daily Quranic recitations and Islamic theological training served as a primary tool for religious coercion, designed to override the child's inherent cultural and religious autonomy. Utilising institutional indoctrination techniques to forcibly alter a Hindu child's worldview reflects a deep-seated bigotry that refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the victim's original faith. This structured erasure of the boy's religious identity and heritage violates fundamental human rights and religious freedom, demonstrating that the underlying motivation of the perpetrators was rooted in an absolute intolerance toward Hinduism. The repetitive and mandatory exposure to Islamic scriptures within an enclosed, Islamic environment was intentionally designed to break the psychological resistance of the Hindu victim. By keeping the child constantly surrounded by an environment designed to alienate him from his Hindu background, the perpetrators maximised his vulnerability and minimised any opportunity for him to retain his original Hindu identity. The use of Islamic texts as a mechanism of psychological subjugation and indoctrination highlights the targeted doctrinal hostility that drove the entire operation from its inception. The forced circumcision of the Hindu minor represents a permanent physical violation that underscores the extreme severity of the religious animosity involved. Circumcision is a specific identifier within Islamic tradition, and forcing a Hindu youth to undergo this procedure was an attempt to physically stamp an alien religious identity onto his body. This act was designed to leave a lifelong physical mark, ensuring that even if the victim later attempted to return to his original faith, he would carry a permanent reminder of his forced conversion. The procedure caused not only severe physical pain but also lasting emotional and psychological trauma, functioning as an intentional degradation of the child’s bodily and religious integrity. The force-feeding of beef serves as a definitive indicator of the specific religious animosity behind this crime, given the sacred status of the cow within Hindu theology. Forcing a Hindu to consume beef is a deliberate violation of a profound religious dietary restriction, traditionally intended to cause immediate spiritual alienation and social disconnect from the Hindu fold. By forcing the boy to consume what is considered a major transgression within his native faith, the perpetrators aimed to desecrate his personal beliefs and psychological ties to Hinduism, using dietary violation as a direct weapon of forced conversion and assimilation. This specific tactic of using the forced consumption of beef to compel the conversion of Hindus mirrors historical methods employed by Muslim extremists and during periods of aggressive Islamic invasions, proselytisation, and religious conflict. Historically, Muslim extremists have utilised the tactic of force-feeding beef to desecrate a Hindu's faith and forcibly convert him to Islam. The revival of these identical methods by the perpetrators in this contemporary case signifies an active continuity of doctrinal hostility, confirming the event as a structured hate crime aimed at religious erasure. These instances of targeted proselytisation activities stem from inherent hostility towards the victims' professed faith since Abrahamic faiths like Islam believe that any non-adherent to their faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert, making it a religiously motivated crime against Hindus. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The exact date of when the Hindu minor boy and the Muslim perpetrators first came into contact was not specified in the available sources. However, the year of initial contact was indicated around 2016. The tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. In this case, 4th May 2016 has been used as the indicative incident date, derived by aligning the known year with the article publication date of 4th May 2026. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only.