Minor Hindu girl abducted amidst threats of religious conversion by mother and Muslim man

Case ID : 30a89ea | Location : Mumbai, Maharashtra, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 17 April, 2026

Case ID : 30a89ea

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

17 April, 2026

Minor Hindu girl abducted amidst threats of religious conversion by mother and Muslim man

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A nine-year-old Hindu girl was taken away by her mother, along with Muslim man Safin Godal, amidst threats of religious conversion and indoctrination. This case came to light after a Hindu man, the victim's father, filed a complaint at the Sukher police station in Udaipur, Rajasthan. According to the complaint submitted to the Superintendent of Police, the couple had married in November 2013 and had a daughter born in October 2017. In 2022, the Hindu woman came into contact with a Muslim colleague named Mohammed Adil, a resident of Bandra East, Mumbai, who worked at the same bank. Over time, Adil influenced her towards Islam, following which she began wearing a hijab and distancing herself from her family. The complaint stated that Adil manipulated her emotionally and financially, withdrew ₹2.59 lakh from the couple’s joint account, sexually exploited her, impregnated her, and later compelled her to undergo an abortion. The Hindu man later persuaded his wife to break contact with Adil, but shortly afterwards, another man, Safin Godal, an SBI employee residing in Nariman Point, Mumbai, entered her life and continued the process of religious indoctrination and coercion. The complaint stated that while the family was staying in their native Udaipur, Safin repeatedly called the husband and threatened him, demanding that he send his wife back to Mumbai immediately. Safin warned him that the woman and their daughter would soon convert to Islam. Around the same time, Safin’s associate Neha Sharma also contacted the husband and threatened that he could lose his job if he did not comply. When confronted about these calls, the Hindu woman informed her husband that she intended to marry Safin and convert to Islam along with their daughter. The family also discovered Urdu religious books in her possession, and she threatened suicide if the matter was disclosed to relatives. After intervention by both families, she temporarily agreed not to take any extreme steps and discussed arranging a transfer from Mumbai to Udaipur. Trusting the assurance, the Hindu man returned to Mumbai for work, leaving his wife and daughter in Udaipur with his parents. Before the husband’s scheduled return on 18 April 2026, the woman left the house early in the morning with Safin Godal, taking their nine-year-old daughter along with a gold chain and approximately ₹5 lakh in cash. She later sent a message stating that she had returned to Mumbai with the child, but enquiries revealed that she had not reached the stated location. The complaint further stated that both accused were connected to a Muslim religious organisation engaged in targeting non-Muslim women for conversion and sexual exploitation. The husband stated that his wife had become fully involved in the conversion network and was also attempting to convert their daughter to Islam. Following the complaint, police initiated an investigation into the disappearance of the woman and child, the conversion activities, financial exploitation, and the involvement of the accused individuals.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being- Conversion of minor. 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 sub-category selected here 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 has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was taken away from her Hindu father and subjected to religious conversion efforts orchestrated by her mother along with a Muslim man named Safin Godal. According to the complaint filed by the girl’s father, the child became entangled in a wider pattern of religious indoctrination after her mother came into contact with Muslim colleagues in Mumbai who influenced her towards Islam. The mother gradually distanced herself from her Hindu family, adopted visible Islamic practices, and eventually pressured her daughter to convert to Islam. It is important to note here that the victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Importantly, the girl’s Hindu father consistently opposed any attempt to convert his daughter and repeatedly objected to the influence being exerted by Safin Godal and others over his wife and child. Despite the father’s opposition, the child’s mother, along with Safin, continued efforts to indoctrinate the girl into Islam. Since minors cannot independently make legally or psychologically informed decisions regarding religious identity, the attempt to alter the religious upbringing of the child against the wishes of one custodial parent raised serious concerns of coercive conversion and religious manipulation targeting a vulnerable Hindu minor. Furthermore, Safin Godal directly threatened the Hindu father and explicitly warned him that both his wife and daughter would soon convert to Islam. These threats demonstrated that the proposed conversion of the child was not incidental or speculative but was communicated as a deliberate objective by the accused. The repeated phone calls demanding that the woman be sent back to Mumbai, along with warnings regarding the conversion of the daughter, indicated sustained pressure upon the family. Such conduct intensified the gravity of the case because the threats were directed not only towards an adult woman but also towards a minor Hindu child whose religious identity and upbringing were being targeted despite her father’s clear objections. The situation escalated further when the mother and Safin Godal left Udaipur with the nine-year-old girl without the father’s knowledge or consent, taking her away from her paternal family and established support system. This removal effectively isolated the girl from the parent who opposed her conversion and from the familial environment in which she had been raised as a Hindu. Such isolation increased the child’s susceptibility to religious indoctrination because minors are heavily dependent on the immediate social and emotional environment around them. By separating the girl from her father and paternal relatives, the accused created conditions in which the child could be more easily influenced, controlled, and assimilated into a different religious identity without meaningful resistance or protection from those seeking to preserve her original faith and upbringing. Overall, this case was significant because it involved coercive religious conversion efforts directed at a minor Hindu girl through psychological pressure, family manipulation, threats, and physical removal from her father’s custody. 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. Therefore, religious conversions, even of minors, are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. 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 have specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. The earliest date mentioned is 18 April 2026, when the minor Hindu girl went missing. Since the Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported, we have considered the date of the incident to be 18 April 2026, although the media reported it on 25 May 2026. Disclaimer: The victim count in this case has been recorded as 1, including only the minor daughter. Although the Hindu man stated in his complaint that his wife was influenced and pressured for religious conversion, the woman herself expressed her intention to stay with Safin Godal and convert to Islam. Since she is an adult legally capable of making her own personal and religious decisions, including the decision to convert, she has not been counted as a victim in this case. The minor daughter, however, has been considered the sole victim because, as a child, she was incapable of providing informed consent regarding religious conversion and was taken away from her father amid conversion-related threats and indoctrination efforts. Disclaimer: The perpetrator count in this case has been recorded as 2, including only the victim’s mother and Safin Godal. Although Mohammed Adil was accused of influencing the woman towards Islam and exploiting her, he has not been included in the perpetrator count because the selected victim in this case is the minor daughter. There was no direct allegation that Adil interacted with, threatened, pressured, or attempted to convert the minor girl. The perpetrator count has therefore been limited to the two individuals who were specifically targeted the minor Hindu child for religious conversion.