Hindu family presured to convert to Islam or leave area, accused openly threaten to convert neighbourhood into Pakistan
Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India 
7 May, 2025
Case Summary
A Hindu family in the Katra Masjid area, Adhartal, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, has been subjected to sustained harassment, violent threats, physical attacks, and explicit demands to either convert to Islam or vacate their home by Muslim neighbours. They openly stated their intention to drive Hindu families out of the area and establish Muslim dominance over the neighbourhood. The victim, Seema Lakhera, filed a written complaint with the CSP after one year of sustained persecution. As per the details, Seema Lakhera and her husband, who earns his living by making idols of Hindu deities, built their home in the Katra Masjid area two years ago. For the past year, Muslim neighbours Siraj Khan and his family, along with Jameela Mansuri and Ruby Khan, have been subjecting the Hindu family to a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation. The perpetrators have explicitly stated that Hindus will not be allowed to live in the area, that the neighbourhood will be made into Pakistan, and that if the family wishes to remain, they must accept Islam. While narrating their ordeal, the Hindu victims shared how animal bones have been thrown at their home on multiple occasions. Stones have been pelted at the house. CCTV cameras installed outside the home were damaged by stone-throwing. When Seema Lakhera's husband travels for work, the perpetrators roam around the house, making obscene gestures. They also engage in gambling, betting, and illegal liquor trade in the area. According to the victim's family, the accused, Jameela Mansuri and her associates have warned the family that they must live like Muslims or be prepared to face consequences. One of the accused, Ruby Khan, disclosed that her own son was serving a 10-year sentence in Nagpur jail in a love jihad case. Seema Lakhera stated that the perpetrators' intention was to occupy the house and promote land jihad [a term used for the systematic displacement of Hindu families from Muslim majority areas through intimidation, harassment, and threats to establish Muslim demographic dominance]. Hindu Dharma Sena workers accompanied her to the SP office, met with the CSP, and filed a complaint. Hindu Dharma Sena state president Neeraj Rajput stated that land jihad was rapidly increasing in Jabalpur and that Hindu families were being targeted to vacate their homes so the entire neighbourhood could be occupied by Muslim residents. The CSP directed the Adhartal police station in charge to take the matter seriously and take immediate action.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is "Attack not resulting in death". The sub-category for this case is "Attacked for Hindu identity". In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. Another sub-category for this case is "Attacked for refusal to convert". When there is pressure, threat or coercion employed upon the Hindu victim to convert to a different religion, in several cases, the victim refuses to succumb to the pressure/threats. Once the victim refuses, the perpetrator proceeds to attack/assault the victim owing to his/her refusal to convert. In such cases, the pressure/threat/intimidation/coercion/violence itself is driven by animosity towards the victim’s Hindu faith. The violence then is another hate crime driven by the victim’s refusal to abandon his professed faith, Hinduism, and convert to the religion of a non-Hindu perpetrator. Since the victim’s faith is at the heart of the pressure to convert and the ensuing violence towards the victim, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other category selected is- Attacked to induce migration from non-Hindu dominated area. There have been cases where the Hindus living in an area, often with a majority dwelling belonging to non-Hindus or those harbouring animosity towards the Hindu faith, the Hindu residents experience threats and violence. The violence is employed with the aim of making the Hindus leave the area and relocate, so the area could be turned into an exclusive ghetto for adherents of the non-Hindu faith or those who harbor animosity towards the Hindu faith. In several cases, the aim of exodus is explicit. However, in several cases, the demand for exodus of Hindu residents is not explicit, however, violence by non-Hindu residents leaves the Hindu residents no option but to leave the area, thereby, turning the area into an exclusive ghetto of non-Hindu residents. In such cases, there are instances violence against the Hindu residents explicitly. For example, in the Hauz Qazi case of 2019, the Muslim residents claimed that mob violence against the Hindu residents had been triggered by a parking dispute. However, the violence did turn religious with a temple being desecrated and was directed specifically against the Hindu residents. The Hindu residents of the area were clear that the violence was religiously motivated and one of the motives was to affect an exodus of the Hindu residents. In such cases, even though the perpetrators have not explicitly expressed the aim of affecting exodus, the given circumstances and violence and precedent point to the intention of exodus and therefore would be categorized under this sub-category. Such crimes are religiously motivated and therefore are hate crimes. The harassment directed at Seema Lakhera and her family was not a neighbourhood dispute with incidental religious dimensions. It was a deliberate and sustained campaign with a clearly stated objective: to remove a Hindu family from their home in a Muslim majority area through a combination of physical intimidation, property damage, conversion demands, and explicit threats of demographic conquest. The perpetrators did not conceal their intent. They stated it openly and repeatedly. Hindus would not be allowed to live there. The area would be made into Pakistan. If the family wished to stay, they must accept Islam. These were not provocative remarks made in the heat of a dispute. They were the articulated terms of a sustained operation targeting a Hindu family's presence in a specific geographic location. The threats directed at the family also reflected a broader Islamist supremacist mindset in which Hindu presence in Muslim dominated localities is viewed as undesirable or illegitimate. The repeated warnings that Hindus must either convert, vacate, or face violence showed an attempt to intimidate and psychologically break Hindu residents until they abandoned the area. Such conduct goes beyond personal hostility and reflects an effort to transform the locality into an exclusively Muslim space where Hindu families would either disappear, submit, or live under constant fear. The repeated invocation of “Pakistan” was not rhetorical excess but a direct demographic and ideological assertion that the area should no longer accommodate visible Hindu presence or Hindu religious identity. The husband's occupation as a maker of idols of Hindu deities is a significant dimension of the targeting. A Hindu man whose livelihood is the creation of Hindu sacred objects, living in a Muslim majority area, represents a concentrated expression of Hindu religious identity and Hindu devotional practice within a space the perpetrators sought to establish as exclusively Muslim. The targeting of this specific household reflects an awareness of the symbolic significance of a Hindu idol-maker's presence in the area and a deliberate decision to eliminate that presence. The periodic absence of the husband for work was identified and exploited by the perpetrators as the condition of maximum vulnerability for the household, establishing a surveillance and opportunism dynamic that reflects organised targeting rather than spontaneous harassment. The physical attacks on the household, the throwing of animal bones, the stone pelting, and the deliberate destruction of CCTV cameras establish a coordinated and escalating campaign of violence against Hindu property. The destruction of the CCTV cameras is particularly significant. The perpetrators did not merely continue their harassment after cameras were installed. They specifically targeted and destroyed the cameras to eliminate the evidence of their conduct. This reflects an awareness of the legal consequences of their actions and a deliberate effort to ensure their campaign of intimidation could not be documented or prosecuted. The destruction of the cameras was not an act of impulse. It was a tactical decision made in the service of the sustained harassment operation. The disclosure by Ruby Khan that her son was serving a 10-year sentence in Nagpur jail for a love jihad case is a revealing self incrimination. A perpetrator who voluntarily discloses that a family member is imprisoned for targeting Hindus in the context of threatening another Hindu family reflects ideological pride in the conduct rather than shame or restraint. The disclosure functioned as an implicit warning that the family was willing to continue targeting Hindus regardless of legal consequences. The broader pattern of land jihad in Jabalpur, documented by Hindu Dharma Sena state president Neeraj Rajput, establishes that the targeting of Seema Lakhera's family was not an isolated incident but part of a structured and documented pattern of displacing Hindu families from Muslim majority areas in the city. The systematic intimidation of Hindu families to force them to vacate their homes reflects a broader demographic strategy aimed at consolidating Muslim dominance over entire neighbourhoods and reducing visible Hindu presence through fear, coercion, and sustained harassment. This case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker because the conduct directed at Seema Lakhera and her family was deliberate, sustained, and rooted in an explicit religious and demographic objective. The perpetrators targeted a Hindu family specifically because they were Hindu, demanded their conversion or displacement specifically to establish Muslim demographic dominance over the area, and subjected them to sustained physical attacks and property destruction specifically to enforce compliance with those demands. The Hindu family of Adhartal was targeted specifically because their Hindu identity and their Hindu idol-maker husband's presence in the area represented an obstacle to the perpetrators' stated objective of making the neighbourhood into Pakistan. This reflected an underlying hostility towards Hindu religious identity and Hindu presence that cannot be characterised as anything other than religiously motivated. Disclaimer: The exact date on which the harassment began was not confirmed in the source. The tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. Since the harassment had been ongoing for approximately one year before the complaint was filed on 8 May 2026, 8 May 2025 has been used as the indicative incident date. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only.
Victim Details
Total Victim
2
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 1
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 2
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 2
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
