Hindu girl kidnapped, raped, and pressured to convert by Muslim man; accused had earlier tried to lure her by concealing his identity

Case ID : 30a913f | Location : Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 29 May, 2026

Case ID : 30a913f

Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

29 May, 2026

Hindu girl kidnapped, raped, and pressured to convert by Muslim man; accused had earlier tried to lure her by concealing his identity

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Case Summary

An 18-year-old Hindu girl, a resident of the tribal region of Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh, was targeted for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Shakeel Shah. The accused, a resident of Shajapur, Indore, kidnapped her and took her to Ajmer, where he raped her and tried to convert her to Islam. Shah was reportedly a repeat offender. He had targeted the victim 6 months ago when she was a minor. On May 30, 2026, Shakeel was arrested and sent to jail on the complaint filed by the victim's father. After securing his release, he returned to target her again. The victim's father stated that the accused, Shakeel Shah, befriended the girl about six months ago while she was working as a labourer. The accused was married, but he concealed this fact from the girl and trapped her into a relationship. At the time, the girl was a minor. Based on the girl's complaint, Alirajpur Police had registered a case against him under charges of molestation and serious provisions of the SC/ST Act and had sent him to jail. However, he was granted bail by the court. The accused, thereafter, began hounding the girl. Three days before the incident was reported, Shakeel Shah, travelled to Alirajpur from Indore on a bike and abducted the girl from her home at night and fled. The police immediately launched a search operation. Based on mobile location information, the accused was initially located in Ajmer, Rajasthan. It was stated that Shakeel attempted to convert the girl there and also raped her. The accused then took the girl to Shajapur via Ujjain. After a chase, the police reached Shajapur and arrested the accused. They also recovered the girl and brought her back to Alirajpur. The police have registered a case against the accused under various sections, and further investigation was underway at the time this case was documented.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This incident has been added to the database under two primary categories. First- Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the selected subcategory is- Harassment, threat, 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. The other category under which this incident has been placed is- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the subcategory is- Forced conversion before marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. 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, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. 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 her religion and give up her religious identity. In both situations, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurising the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. This case constitutes a religiously motivated hate crime because the victim was specifically targeted as a Hindu girl and subjected to a pattern of deception, exploitation, and conversion pressure aimed at severing her from her faith. The religious dimension of the offence is evident from the fact that the accused only sought a relationship with the victim to ultimately compel her to abandon her Hindu identity and embrace Islam. A particularly significant aspect of the incident is that the accused identified the victim while she was still a minor and began cultivating influence over her. The relationship was built on deception from the outset. The accused concealed his true identity and the fact that he was already married in order to gain the victim's trust and overcome barriers that may otherwise have prevented the relationship from developing. Such concealment was not a random act of dishonesty. It served a clear purpose. Gaining access to a Hindu girl who might not have entered the relationship had she known the truth. The subsequent attempt to convert the victim sheds light on the significance of that deception. The concealment of identity enabled the accused to establish trust, emotional dependency, and influence over the victim before introducing pressure to change her religion. The sequence of events demonstrates that the deception and the conversion effort were interconnected. The victim's Hindu identity was not incidental to the offence. It was precisely her existing faith that became the target of efforts to alter her religious beliefs and affiliation. The case also reveals a deliberate effort to isolate the victim from sources of support and resistance. By taking her away from her familiar environment and family network, the accused placed her in circumstances where she became more vulnerable to manipulation and pressure. Isolation weakens a person's ability to seek help, receive guidance, or resist coercive demands. In cases involving religious conversion, such separation often serves to make the victim more dependent on the perpetrator and more susceptible to influence. The fact that the victim was first targeted while she was still a minor further aggravates the offence. It essentially means that the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. It is a well-established fact that children are more susceptible to manipulation since they are still developing emotionally, cognitively, and socially. Their brains are not fully mature, making them more vulnerable to influence and less capable of critically evaluating information. Since the underlying offence in this case is against children of a specific faith and involves subtle tactics of indoctrination, which obviously stems from a bias against the Hindu faith. Moreover, the purpose here was not emotional or personal but strategic. The ultimate goal was to alienate the victim from her Hindu faith and assimilate her into a different religious identity. This pattern stems from a supremacist interpretation of Abrahamic religious doctrine, where those who do not follow the same faith are viewed as inferior, impure, or needing to be corrected. In such a worldview, conversion is not an invitation—it is an obligation. The non-believer is not respected as different, but is dehumanised until they conform. As a result, Hindus are often targeted not for personal reasons but because of their religious identity. The violence, manipulation, and betrayal involved in these cases are not isolated acts of cruelty but are manifestations of an underlying ideological hostility towards Hinduism, its traditions, and its followers. This is why such cases must be recognised and documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The victims are not just exploited individuals, but Hindus targeted for being Hindu.