Hindu woman trapped with job offer; exploited, blackmailed and coerced to convert by Muslim man in Bhilwara, Rajasthan

Case ID : 30a9011 | Location : Bhilwara, Rajasthan, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 15 June, 2023

Case ID : 30a9011

Bhilwara, Rajasthan, India

15 June, 2023

Hindu woman trapped with job offer; exploited, blackmailed and coerced to convert by Muslim man in Bhilwara, Rajasthan

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Bhilwara, Rajasthan, a Hindu woman was lured with the promise of employment, subjected to physical and financial exploitation, and pressured to convert to Islam by a Muslim man. After the woman submitted a complaint, a video circulated on YouTube in which she stated that she had been deceived, exploited, blackmailed, and taken to a dargah against her will, where she was pressured to abandon her Hindu faith and convert to Islam. According to the victim’s account, the incident dates back to 2023. She was married at that time and lived with her husband. A Muslim man approached her under the pretext of getting her a job. The victim ran a dairy products business. The accused convinced her to sell her property to him by promising better profits. The plot was sold for 15–16 lakhs to another Muslim man, but the accused took possession of the proceeds without paying any amount to the victim. During this period, the accused once intoxicated the victim, sexually assaulted her and filmed the act. He then started to coerce the victim into signing documents under intimidation. He later circulated those documents in the social groups of the victim as evidence of a live-in arrangement. As per the victim, she was blackmailed with threats that the compromising photographs and videos would be made viral if she resisted. The accused repeatedly took jewellery and money from her, and she was forced to accompany him to a dargah where Islamic rituals were performed on her to pressure her into abandoning her Hindu faith and accepting Islam. The victim stated that she was taken to a dargah where she was fed something and compelled to participate in rituals against her will. She was told to renounce Hindu Dharma and accept Islam. When she resisted, she was threatened with violence and humiliation. Her testimony revealed that the accused used deception, coercion, and threats to force her into conversion. Hindu organisations highlighted the case as part of a wider pattern of targeting Hindu women through inducement, exploitation, and religious pressure. Police confirmed that a complaint was lodged and that an investigation was underway. The victim’s statement was recorded, and the case was registered for further action.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category: Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the selected subcategory is: Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducements. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. The other selected subcategory is: Harassment, threats, and 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 was included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because a Hindu woman was specifically targeted through deception, exploitation, and sustained pressure aimed at making her abandon her Hindu faith and accept Islam. The religious dimension was central to the abuse, as the victim was not merely subjected to personal exploitation but was also repeatedly pushed to relinquish her religious identity. Initially, the perpetrator established control by exploiting the victim’s trust and vulnerabilities through false assurances of employment and financial advancement. These promises served as a calculated means of drawing her into a position where she could be manipulated, exploited, and made increasingly dependent on him. The victim’s testimony that she was deceived and manipulated demonstrated that the conduct was neither incidental nor spontaneous but formed part of a carefully orchestrated strategy designed to weaken her resistance and ultimately subject her to pressure to abandon her Hindu faith. Moreover, the progression from deception to coercion indicated a calculated process through which the victim was drawn into a position of dependence and vulnerability, making her more susceptible to pressure aimed at changing her religious identity. The pressure to renounce Hindu Dharma and accept Islam revealed a clear religious motive behind the harassment. Intimidation, blackmail, and threats were employed whenever the victim resisted, showing that coercive tactics were deliberately used to undermine her freedom to practise and retain her faith. The abuse, therefore, extended beyond personal wrongdoing and became an attack on her religious identity. The victim was taken to a mosque against her will and was compelled to participate in religious rituals despite her objections. The complete disregard for her consent demonstrated an effort to strip her of her agency and subordinate her wishes to the demands of the perpetrator. By forcing her participation in practices associated with another faith, the perpetrator sought to normalise the abandonment of her Hindu identity while conveying that her beliefs, choices, and right to refuse held no value. The sustained use of coercion in religious settings reflected a deliberate attempt to break her resistance, detach her from her faith, and compel conformity to the perpetrator’s religion. Taken together, the pattern of deception, manipulation, religious coercion, and threats demonstrated that the victim was targeted because of her faith, as the perpetrator's end goal was to bring her into the folds of Islam. These actions of the accused stemmed 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. This mindset does not merely tolerate the existence of another faith but seeks its erasure or assimilation. As a result, Hindus are often targeted not because of who they are as individuals, but because of their religious identity. The violence, deception, or humiliation inflicted in such cases is therefore not random, but part of a broader ideological hostility toward Hinduism and its symbols, practices, and adherents. Here, too, the predatory actions stemmed from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith, which is why this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the victim's ordeal began, rather than when it was reported in the media. In this case, the victim stated that her ordeal began in 2023. The media reports did not state the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. Therefore, the date of the case has been recorded as 16 June 2023, derived by aligning the known year with the article publication date of 16th June 2026. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only.