Married Hindu woman emotionally manipulated, sexually exploited and blackmailed for religious conversion by Muslim man

Case ID : 30a85de | Location : Shrawasti, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 12 December, 2025

Case ID : 30a85de

Shrawasti, Uttar Pradesh, India

12 December, 2025

Married Hindu woman emotionally manipulated, sexually exploited and blackmailed for religious conversion by Muslim man

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Blackmailed to convert

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Case Summary

In the Shravasti district of Uttar Pradesh, a married Hindu woman named Priyanka Gupta was emotionally manipulated, sexually exploited and blackmailed for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Irfan, along with his accomplice Rubina. According to the complaint submitted to Superintendent of Police Rahul Bhati, the incident occurred within the jurisdiction of Malhipur police station, where the victim lived with her husband, Arjun Lal Gupta, who operated a juice and lassi shop at the Malhipur intersection. The victim stated that Irfan took advantage of her loneliness and vulnerability while her husband remained occupied with work outside the home. During this period, Irfan frequently visited the house in the husband’s absence and gradually lured the victim into a relationship through emotional manipulation and promises of affection. The victim stated that Irfan drugged her and repeatedly raped her over a period of nearly six months. During the course of the sexual exploitation, he secretly recorded obscene photographs and videos of her without her consent and later used those recordings to blackmail and intimidate her. The woman stated that whenever she resisted his advances or attempted to distance herself from him, he threatened to release the private videos and photographs on social media. She further stated that Irfan repeatedly pressured her to abandon Hinduism, convert to Islam, and elope with him. According to her statement, he explicitly told her to leave her husband and adopt Islam, while using the threat of making the videos viral to force compliance. The victim described living in constant fear, mental distress, and confinement within her own home due to the sustained intimidation and coercion. The complaint further stated that when the victim became pregnant, Irfan, along with a woman identified as Rubina, forcibly made her undergo an abortion after administering drugs to her. The victim and her husband both stated that Rubina actively assisted Irfan in manipulating and harassing the woman throughout the ordeal. Following the abortion, the pressure for religious conversion intensified, with the accused continuing to threaten the victim with public exposure of the obscene material if she refused to convert to Islam and leave her family behind. Arjun Lal Gupta, the victim’s husband, stated that he spent most of his day operating his shop to support the family while Irfan continued visiting their home behind his back. He stated that his wife was mentally tortured for months and that the accused ruined their family life through deception, exploitation, blackmail, and threats. He further stated that after the abortion, the accused threatened to kill his wife and continued intimidating the family by warning that the videos would be circulated publicly. The couple stated that despite the prolonged nature of the incidents occurring within the Malhipur police station area, the local police failed to take serious action, leaving them disheartened and fearful. Unable to obtain relief at the local level, the victim and her husband approached Superintendent of Police Rahul Bhati directly and submitted a written complaint seeking strict legal action against Irfan and Rubina.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Blackmailed to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is blackmailed to convert her religion, owing to her religious identity of being a Hindu. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim, however, there could be cases where the relationship is not consensual and the non-Hindu man starts blackmailing a Hindu woman to convert her religion. In these cases, it is often seen that the Hindu woman is blackmailed with intimate photos and/or videos, threats of harm to her or her family, threats of violence etc. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here 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 has been added to the tracker because a married Hindu woman named Priyanka Gupta was emotionally manipulated, sexually exploited, blackmailed, and pressured to convert to Islam by a Muslim man named Irfan, with the active involvement of his associate, Rubina. The victim stated that the accused trapped her through deception, repeatedly raped her, recorded obscene videos without her consent, forced her to undergo an abortion, and subsequently used the material to coerce her into abandoning her Hindu faith and converting to Islam. Firstly, the Muslim accused subjected the Hindu victim to sustained sexual exploitation and intimidation while specifically targeting her religious identity. The obscene videos recorded by the accused were not merely tools of personal blackmail but instruments of coercion used to pressure the victim into renouncing Hinduism and embracing Islam. The crime therefore extended beyond sexual violence and entered the realm of religiously motivated targeting, where the victim’s Hindu identity became central to the abuse inflicted upon her. The repeated threats to leak private videos unless she converted demonstrated a deliberate attempt to exploit vulnerability in order to force religious submission. Secondly, the pattern of abuse reflected a calculated process of psychological, physical, and religious subjugation. In such cases, sexual exploitation and blackmail often function as mechanisms not only to dominate the victim physically but also to break her emotionally and spiritually so that resistance to conversion weakens over time. The victim stated that she was repeatedly threatened, isolated, and terrorised into compliance while pressure was continuously exerted upon her to leave her husband, abandon her faith, and convert to Islam. The sustained nature of the coercion indicated that the acts were targeted and systematic rather than isolated personal crimes. Thirdly, the explicit pressure exerted on the victim to renounce Hinduism and convert to Islam constituted a direct attack on her religious identity and personal dignity. The accused repeatedly demanded that she leave her Hindu faith and elope with him after converting to Islam, while simultaneously threatening to make her private videos public if she refused. Such coercion was not an issue of personal disagreement or relationship conflict, but an attempt to erase the victim’s existing religious identity through intimidation, fear, and abuse. The targeting of her faith as an obstacle that needed to be removed demonstrates the religious dimension underlying the offence. Fourthly, when the victim resisted the pressure to convert to Islam and refused to leave her husband and renounce her Hindu faith, the accused escalated the intimidation by threatening to leak her obscene videos and photographs on social media. This threat was not incidental but functioned as a coercive mechanism designed to force compliance through fear, shame, and social destruction. The public dissemination of intimate material carries severe social and psychological consequences for women, making such threats a powerful tool of domination and control. The accused exploited this vulnerability to compel the victim to surrender her religious identity and submit to his demands. The blackmail therefore became intrinsically linked to the conversion pressure, demonstrating that the threats were specifically deployed to punish resistance to religious conversion and to psychologically break the victim into abandoning her Hindu faith. Additionally, the victim stated that when she became pregnant, the accused, along with Rubina, forcibly made her undergo an abortion through the administration of drugs. This further intensified the pattern of control, exploitation, and coercion exercised over the victim. The acts collectively reflected an organised pattern of abuse in which emotional manipulation, sexual violence, blackmail, forced abortion, and conversion pressure were all used together to dominate and subjugate a Hindu woman on the basis of her religious identity. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. Such acts were not merely personal crimes; they were rooted in a desire to dominate and erase the religious identity of the victim. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, though it is mentioned that she was exploited for 6 months. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date, 13 December 2025, as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 13 May 2026, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.