Hindu woman deceived into marriage by Muslim man posing as Hindu; beaten, forced to eat meat and wear burqa; abandoned upon revelation of identity

Case ID : 30a8cd0 | Location : Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 3 June, 2026

Case ID : 30a8cd0

Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, India

3 June, 2026

Hindu woman deceived into marriage by Muslim man posing as Hindu; beaten, forced to eat meat and wear burqa; abandoned upon revelation of identity

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Forced conversion after marriage

Forced to wear Hijab

Forced to eat beef

Case Summary

In Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived, sexually assaulted and coerced to eat meat and wear burqa by her Muslim husband who posed as Hindu named Sahab Singh Thakur to marry her. Upon discovery of his real identity he subjected her to sustained mental and physical harassment before abandoning her. In 2024, the victim Maya married the accused in a court marriage, believing him to be Sahab Singh Thakur, a Hindu of the Thakur caste. Few months before the complaint, the accused's identity came to the victim's knowledge. The victim subsequently filed a complaint with Sadar Kotwali Police, in which she stated that the accused had married her by falsely presenting himself as Hindu. She further stated that upon his true identity being revealed, he had physically assaulted her, forcibly fed her meat against her will, forced her to wear burqa and subjected her to continuous mental and physical harassment. when she objected and confronted him, the accused responded by physically assaulting her. He beat her until she lost consciousness, and abandoned her on the roadside in that condition before fleeing. Police, upon receiving information, arrived at the scene and admitted the victim to hospital for treatment. Police registered a case against the accused under relevant applicable sections of law. The Circle Officer, City, Himanshu Mathur, confirmed and stated that investigation into the matter was under way.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within this, the subcategory selected is - Man pretends to be Hindu. Under this, the tertiary category selected is - Name changed. When a non-Hindu man pretends to be a Hindu to deceive a Hindu woman into a relationship, the act is seen as triggered by malicious intentions. In some cases, the woman eventually accepts the man’s original religious identity and converts after the man’s identity is revealed. These cases could be argued as cases of religious brainwashing and a result of the pressure a woman feels after getting into a relationship with a man. The woman, it can be argued, also changed her religious identity because of the stigma she believes she might face if she chooses to walk out of a deceptive relationship. However, for the purpose of documenting hate crimes, the cases in this subcategory are limited to those where there is explicit violence aimed at religious conversion against the wishes of the victim (force-feeding beef, blackmailing with intimate videos, rape on refusal to convert, etc), or if the woman herself complains of the man’s religious deception. In such cases, it is established that the deception of the non-Hindu man had a specific aim of religious conversion or targeting of the victim due to her Hindu religious identity, therefore, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. The other subcategory selected in this case is "Forced conversion after marriage". The tertiary categories here are "Forced to wear Hijab" and "Forced to eat beef". In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to any Abrahamic faith, like Islam, begins after marriage. 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. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither party is required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert to his religion after marriage. 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 to his religion and give up her religious identity. In both situations, there is the application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, being forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing; however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. This case was included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because the conduct of the accused was directed at the victim specifically by reason of her Hindu religious identity. Every act the accused committed, from the point of first contact, was structured around concealment, exploitation, and ultimately the erasure of that identity. At the outset, the accused understood that his Muslim identity was an obstacle. A Hindu woman of the Thakur caste would not have consented to marriage with a Muslim man. He therefore constructed an entirely false Hindu identity, complete with a Hindu name and a caste affiliation. Had his intentions been genuine, he would not have needed to hide behind a fabricated identity. The deception was calculated; he identified the victim's Hindu identity as the barrier between him and access to her, and he dismantled that barrier through deliberate fraud. Furthermore, the accused's true intentions became unmistakable once his identity was exposed. The force-feeding of meat to the victim was not a domestic dispute or a cultural misunderstanding. For a Hindu woman, the consumption of meat carries profound religious significance. It is not merely a dietary preference but a matter of faith, identity, and deeply held religious conviction. Forcing meat upon her against her will was an act of religious desecration, a deliberate assault on the most intimate expression of her Hindu identity. It was not done carelessly. It was done to humiliate, to violate, and to signal that her Hindu identity was no longer hers to protect. Similarly, the force applied upon her to wear the burqa, which she was compelled to adopt against her will. This coercion directly infringed upon her religious freedom, stripping her of the right to maintain her religious identity. The use of force to compel her to observe Islamic rituals, demonstrates an attempt to erase her Hindu identity and impose Islamic practices upon her. When she resisted these impositions, the accused resorted to violence, further highlighting the underlying religious intolerance. This physical assault is not just an act of domestic abuse; it is deeply intertwined with religious bigotry, as it was triggered by her refusal to abandon her faith and conform to his demands. Importantly, the pattern the accused followed was not spontaneous. The assumption of a false Hindu identity, the court marriage secured under that false identity, the revelation of his true identity, the forced imposition of practices antithetical to the victim's Hindu faith, and the violence upon her refusal to comply, this sequence reflects a documented method by which Hindu women have been targeted across multiple cases in India. The accused's conduct was not the improvisation of an individual; it was the execution of a pattern whose purpose, in every recorded instance, has been the same: to gain access to a Hindu woman through religious fraud and to use that access to compel the surrender of her Hindu identity. The accused's motive was religious conquest achieved through deception, sustained through coercion, and enforced through violence. The victim's Hindu identity was never incidental to what was done to her. It was the reason she was chosen, the reason she was deceived, and the reason she was beaten when she refused to relinquish it. The case, therefore, qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime directed against the victim’s Hindu identity across every stage of the accused’s conduct from the first false introduction to the final abandonment.