Minor Hindu boy from Bijnor lured to Kashmir and forcibly converted to Islam by Muslims

Case ID : 30a86f1 | Location : Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 16 May, 2026

Case ID : 30a86f1

Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, India

16 May, 2026

Minor Hindu boy from Bijnor lured to Kashmir and forcibly converted to Islam by Muslims

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 named Vishal (17) was lured and taken to Jammu and Kashmir, where he was forcibly converted to Islam by Muslims. He was lured by his Muslim neighbour, Wasim, with the promise of employment. The victim, Vishal, belonged to a financially struggling Hindu family from Bakharpur/Khanjahanpur village in the Kotwali City police station area of Bijnor district, Uttar Pradesh. Due to the family’s poor financial condition, the victim had been searching for work when his neighbour, a Muslim man named Wasim, took him to Srinagar on the pretext of securing him employment at a hair-cutting salon. The incident came to light after the victim’s family received a phone call on 15 May 2026 from an unknown number. During the call, the minor victim told his father and relatives to forget about him, stating that he had converted to Islam. Shortly afterwards, the family received multiple videos showing the conversion proceedings, in which the minor was seen wearing Muslim attire and a flower garland while publicly declaring acceptance of Islam. In the videos, the minor was also given the new name Mohammad Hamza, essentially a Muslim name. The videos were recorded at a Jamia mosque in Kashmir and were subsequently circulated on social media. According to the victim’s family, the victim appeared extremely frightened and mentally distressed in the videos, leading them to come to the conclusion that he had been subjected to intimidation, coercion, and psychological pressure. The victim’s uncle stated that the caller explicitly told the family, “Forget about your son now, because he has converted to Islam.” The victim’s parents broke down emotionally after seeing the videos. The family presented the boy’s high school marksheet as proof that he is legally a minor, asserting that he could not legally consent to religious conversion. The victim’s father, Krishna, stated that his son had been manipulated and mentally pressured into abandoning his faith, while his mother Pinky appealed to the authorities for the safe return of her child. The victim’s sister also publicly demanded her brother’s return, stating that the family had been devastated by the incident. As news of the case spread across the village and nearby areas, anger and concern grew among local residents and Hindu organisations. Representatives of Hindu groups and local community members visited the victim’s family and expressed solidarity, asserting that the minor Hindu boy had been lured away from home and forcibly converted while isolated in Kashmir. The matter also drew political attention, with former BJP MP Kunwar Bharatendra Singh accompanying the family to meet senior police officials and demanding strict action against those responsible. He stated that the alleged forced conversion of a minor was an extremely serious matter requiring impartial investigation and stringent legal action. Following public outrage and the circulation of the videos on social media, the police registered an FIR against Wasim and other unidentified accused persons. Acting on the instructions of the Superintendent of Police, a special police team was reportedly dispatched to Kashmir to safely recover the minor and investigate the circumstances surrounding the conversion. Meanwhile, a declaration was issued by the mosque in Kashmir claimed that the minor victim had accepted Islam voluntarily and without any coercion or inducement. However, the victim’s family and Hindu organisations rejected this claim, insisting that the boy had been deceived, isolated, and psychologically pressured while being a minor away from home. The family’s sole demand remained the safe return of their minor son at any cost.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category selected is- 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. In this case, the forced conversion of a minor Hindu boy to Islam after being lured and taken to Jammu and Kashmir by his Muslim neighbour, Wasim, under the guise of employment. This was a clear example of a religiously motivated hate crime targeting a vulnerable Hindu victim. The victim was taken to Jammu and Kashmir, where he was targeted by members of the Muslim community and stripped of his religious identity through coercive conversion. The incident demonstrates deliberate targeting of a Hindu minor for religious conversion, which directly attacks the victim’s faith, identity, family ties, and sense of belonging within his Hindu community. The act of forcing a Hindu child to abandon his religion and adopt another faith is not merely an individual crime but an assault on the victim’s religious freedom and identity, making the religious motive in this case unmistakably evident. It is first important to address that the victim here is a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience is missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age, are inherently vulnerable to manipulation, intimidation, and coercion. They lack the emotional maturity and intellectual capacity to fully comprehend the lifelong implications and consequences of abandoning their ancestral faith and adopting another religion. In this case, the Muslim perpetrators exploited the vulnerability and isolation of the minor victim while he was away from home and dependent on others for survival and employment. By coercing him into conversion, they stripped him of his Hindu identity, disconnected him from his family and community, and imposed a religious transformation upon a child incapable of giving informed consent. This constitutes a clear case of coercion and manipulation being used to erase the victim’s Hindu faith and identity, making it an unmistakable instance of a religiously motivated crime. In this case, even though the victim himself contacted his family and told them to forget him because he had converted to Islam, the question of consent remains entirely invalid because he is a minor. As already established, a child cannot legally or morally provide informed consent in matters carrying such profound spiritual, psychological, and social consequences. The circumstances clearly indicate coercion, manipulation, and psychological pressure being used to sever the victim from his Hindu roots and forcefully alter his religious identity. Forced religious conversion fundamentally violates an individual’s religious autonomy and their basic right to freely practise and preserve their faith without fear, intimidation, or external pressure. The fact that the Muslim perpetrators forcibly converted the boy to Islam at an age when he could not even fully understand the meaning, implications, and permanence of religious conversion demonstrates deep hostility and prejudice towards the Hindu faith and community. The deliberate targeting of a vulnerable Hindu minor for conversion reflects a conscious attempt to erase his existing religious identity and assimilate him into another faith against his natural capacity for informed choice. The forced conversion of a minor Hindu boy in such a manner constitutes a hate crime because the victim was specifically targeted on the basis of his religious identity. The perpetrators did not merely exploit an economically vulnerable child but sought to fundamentally alter his faith, identity, and communal belonging through coercive means. Such actions go beyond ordinary criminal conduct because they are rooted in hostility towards the victim’s religion and are intended to suppress, replace, or erase his Hindu identity. The trauma inflicted upon the child and his family is immense, as the victim’s parents were left devastated after receiving videos of their son’s conversion while being unable to contact or protect him. The emotional and psychological impact of forcibly separating a minor from his faith and family under coercive circumstances reflects the deeply hateful and targeted nature of this crime. An especially significant aspect of this case is that the victim’s Hindu name, Vishal, was changed to “Mohammad Hamza” during the conversion process. This renaming was not merely a neutral or symbolic act, but represented the replacement of the victim’s original Hindu identity with an explicitly Islamic identity. Such a transformation carries deep religious, cultural, and psychological implications, particularly in the case of a minor who was isolated from his family and support system. By assigning the victim a new Islamic name immediately after the conversion, the process effectively severed his visible association with his Hindu roots and imposed upon him a new religious identity aligned with Islam. The renaming therefore functioned not only as part of the conversion ritual but also as an assertion of Islamic identity over the victim’s pre-existing Hindu identity, further demonstrating that the conversion process was aimed at erasing his original religious and cultural belonging. Such instances of predatory forced proselytisation stem from deep-seated religious animosity towards Hindu victims, particularly where doctrinal attitudes within Abrahamic faith traditions view non-adherents as spiritually inferior or in need of conversion. This ideological hostility creates an environment where vulnerable Hindus, especially minors and economically disadvantaged individuals, become targets for coercive religious conversion. This case is not an isolated incident of religiously motivated targeting of Hindus through predatory proselytisation. The Hinduphobia Tracker has documented a total of 1,650 cases of predatory proselytisation between January 2023 and 18 May 2026, where Hindu victims were targeted for religious conversion through coercion, inducements, deception, intimidation, manipulation, emotional exploitation, sexual exploitation, blackmail, or sustained psychological pressure. Out of these 1,650 documented cases, in 804 cases the accused were Muslims. Significantly, among these 804 cases involving Muslim accused, as many as 383 cases involve minor Hindu victims, highlighting a deeply disturbing pattern of vulnerable Hindu children being specifically targeted for religious conversion and exploitation. The high number of minor victims demonstrates a recurring pattern in which vulnerable Hindu children and teenagers are deliberately profiled due to their age, emotional immaturity, economic vulnerability, or dependence on others. Minors are incapable of fully understanding the lifelong spiritual, psychological, and social consequences of religious conversion, making them especially susceptible to coercion and manipulation. The repeated targeting of Hindu minors in such large numbers reflects a systematic pattern of exploiting vulnerable Hindu victims in order to strip them of their religious identity and assimilate them into another faith. This recurring trend showcases that these incidents are not isolated personal disputes but form part of a broader pattern of religiously motivated targeting of Hindu victims through coercive and deceptive means. In this case, the deliberate targeting and forced conversion of a minor Hindu boy while he was away from his family and seeking employment reflects a conscious attempt to exploit vulnerability in order to erase his Hindu identity and assimilate him into another faith. The coercive nature of the conversion, the victim’s minor status, and the evident targeting of his Hindu identity together establish this as a clear case of a religiously motivated hate crime. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the victim’s ordeal begins rather than when the incident is reported by the media. In this case, media reports do not specify the exact date on which the minor Hindu boy’s ordeal and forced conversion process began. The reports only mention the date of 17 May 2026, when the victim’s uncle received a phone call informing the family about the conversion. Therefore, since this is the only specific date mentioned in the available reports, 17 May 2026 has been selected as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker acknowledges that multiple individuals may have been involved in the conversion process of the minor Hindu victim, including persons associated with the mosque and others present during the conversion proceedings in Kashmir. However, among the accused, only Wasim has been explicitly identified by name in the available media reports and police complaint at this stage. Therefore, for documentation and database classification purposes, the perpetrator count has presently been recorded as 1.