Hindu girl held hostage for five weeks; repeatedly raped and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim youth and his associates

Case ID : 30a8628 | Location : Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 8 April, 2026

Case ID : 30a8628

Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, India

8 April, 2026

Hindu girl held hostage for five weeks; repeatedly raped and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim youth and his associates

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices

Forced to eat beef

Rape for refusal to convert

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Case Summary

A 21-year-old Hindu girl from Jawahar Colony, Dehat police station area, Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, was abducted on 9 April 2026 by Shahid Khan alias Punna Khan, a Muslim youth from Babina, who had trapped her in a love trap. She was held hostage across multiple locations over approximately five weeks, repeatedly raped, pressured to accept Islam, forced to eat meat, and had Muslim religious symbols inscribed on her body. Her wedding to another man had been scheduled for 20 April 2026. As per details, the victim left home at 9 am on 9 April 2026 to buy goods from the market and did not return. A Muslim woman named Naseem Khan, a neighbour, had played a key role in luring the victim away from home, convincing her with promises of a better life. Family members reported her disappearance to the Dehat police station, and a missing persons case was registered. Shahid Khan took the victim first to Ajmer, then to Gwalior, Jhansi, and finally to a rented room in Babina, Jhansi district, Uttar Pradesh, where he held her hostage. During the period of captivity, Shahid Khan repeatedly raped the victim, subjected her to physical and mental exploitation, pressured her to accept Islam, forced her to eat meat, and inscribed Muslim religious symbols on her body. VHP district minister Vinod Puri Goswami, who spoke directly with the victim after her rescue, confirmed these details. On 13 May 2026, the victim managed to call her family from captivity, informing them that she was being held hostage at Chunna Chacha's house near Sarvodaya School, Shastri Nagar, Babina. Family members reached Babina and alerted the police, who rescued her. Police registered an FIR against Shahid Khan under rape and several other sections, and against Naseem Khan for her role in luring the victim from home. Shahid Khan was arrested. VHP and Bajrang Dal workers reached the police station upon news of the rescue and demanded strict action. The investigating officer noted that conversion had not yet been confirmed in formal statements but that the investigation was ongoing.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category here is "Forced conversion before marriage". The tertiary categories here are "Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices" and "Forced to eat beef". 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. Another sub-category for this case is "Rape for refusal to convert". When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces pressure/threats/violence to convert and change her religious identity 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 pressuring the Hindu woman to convert. In some of these cases, the association could be non-consensual as well or, the religious identity of the non-Muslim man could be previously unknown to the Hindu victim. As the case may be, in such cases, the non-Hindu man forces himself sexually on the Hindu woman when she refuses his advances and pressures to convert her religion. The rape of the woman is often seen as either a punishment for the woman refusing to convert. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. One other sub-category 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. The abduction of the Hindu girl from Shivpuri was not a spontaneous act of criminal opportunity. It was a premeditated and coordinated operation involving at least two individuals, Shahid Khan and Naseem Khan, in which a Hindu girl was identified, psychologically prepared for abduction through the deliberate cultivation of trust by a Muslim neighbour, and then held across multiple locations for five weeks while being subjected to a systematic campaign of religious coercion alongside sustained sexual violence. The role of Naseem Khan in the operation is a significant organisational marker. A Muslim woman neighbour does not spontaneously convince a Hindu girl to leave her home and family unless she has been recruited to serve a specific purpose within a planned operation. Naseem Khan's documented role in luring the victim through false promises of a better life established the grooming phase of the operation, in which the victim's trust was cultivated before the abduction was executed. The coordination between Naseem Khan and Shahid Khan reflects an organised operation rather than an individual criminal act. The multi-location movement of the victim across Ajmer, Gwalior, Jhansi, and Babina over five weeks was a deliberate strategy of disorientation and isolation. Each relocation placed the victim further from her family, her community, and any possibility of independent escape or rescue. The selection of multiple locations across different states reflects a planned effort to make the victim untraceable while the conversion and sexual exploitation were conducted without interference. The victim's captivity ended only because she managed to make a single phone call to her family on 13 May 2026, establishing that no institutional mechanism had located her during the five weeks of her captivity. The conversion methodology employed during the captivity was structured and sequential. The victim was first pressured to accept Islam verbally, then forced to eat beef, a direct assault on her Hindu religious identity given the sacred status of the cow in Hinduism, and finally had Muslim religious symbols inscribed on her body. This sequence reflects a deliberate progression from verbal coercion to physical religious marking, in which the victim's body itself was used as a site for the inscription of Islamic religious identity against her will. The inscription of Muslim religious symbols on a Hindu woman's body is among the most extreme expressions of forced religious identity replacement documented in the tracker's database. The repeated rape conducted throughout the captivity served the same function as the religious coercion: it established total physical and psychological dominance over the victim, making resistance to the conversion demands less possible with each passing day. The use of sexual violence as an instrument of religious coercion reflects a documented pattern in cases of this kind, in which the physical subjugation of a Hindu woman is deployed alongside religious demands to create conditions of maximum vulnerability and compliance. The timing of the abduction, eleven days before the victim's scheduled wedding to another man, raises a further significant question about the targeting. The victim was removed from her family precisely at the point when her social and family bonds were at their most active and her impending marriage would have made her unavailable. Whether the timing was deliberate or coincidental cannot be confirmed on the available evidence, but its effect was to prevent the scheduled Hindu marriage and subject the victim to a sustained Islamic conversion campaign in its place. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, the perpetrators' conduct reflected more than abduction and sexual assault. By coordinating a grooming and abduction operation targeting a Hindu girl eleven days before her wedding, transporting her across multiple states to prevent rescue, subjecting her to sustained rape, forced meat consumption, verbal conversion pressure, and the physical inscription of Muslim religious symbols on her body, their actions demonstrated a deliberate and organised campaign to strip a Hindu woman of her religious identity through the simultaneous exploitation of her body and her faith. The victim was targeted specifically because she was Hindu, and every instrument of the operation, being grooming, abduction, sexual violence, forced beef consumption, and religious marking, was chosen because it would be most effective in separating a Hindu woman from her identity under conditions of total captivity. This reflects an underlying hostility toward Hindu religious identity that cannot be characterised as anything other than religiously motivated. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the tracker.