Hindu woman defrauded into marriage by Muslim gym trainer posing as Hindu, physically abused for refusing to convert

Case ID : 30a9380 | Location : Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 21 June, 2020

Case ID : 30a9380

Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India

21 June, 2020

Hindu woman defrauded into marriage by Muslim gym trainer posing as Hindu, physically abused for refusing to convert

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Marries as per Hindu rituals

Forced conversion after marriage

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Case Summary

A Hindu woman from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, was deceived into marrying a Muslim man posing as a Hindu, subjected to physical abuse, and repeatedly pressured to convert to Islam. According to reports, the victim came into contact with a Muslim gym trainer in 2020, who introduced himself as a Hindu and concealed his real religious identity. Believing him to be a Hindu, she entered into a relationship with him and eventually married him according to Hindu rituals. The accused continued concealing his identity even after she became pregnant. The deception came to light when the woman discovered his Aadhaar card, which revealed that he belonged to the Bohra Muslim community. When she confronted him, he threatened to kill her parents before taking his own life, leaving her fearful and unable to challenge him further. According to the victim, her ordeal worsened after the birth of their child. She stated that the accused repeatedly pressured her to embrace Islam and physically assaulted her when she refused. Unable to endure the abuse, she returned to her parents' home in 2021. However, the accused followed her there as well, prompting the registration of a First Information Report at Dwarkapuri Police Station in Indore. Based on the complaint, police booked the accused under multiple provisions of the Indian Penal Code relating to house trespass, cruelty, voluntarily causing hurt, criminal intimidation, and mischief, along with provisions of the Madhya Pradesh Dharmik Swatantrya Adhiniyam relating to unlawful religious conversion. The victim further said that the accused later attempted to abduct her from a Shiv temple, assaulted and threatened her, and also threatened members of the temple priest's family. Fearing for her safety, she sought police protection. Left to raise her daughter on her own, the woman filed a maintenance application in January 2022. In 2023, the Family Court rejected her claim on the ground that she was not the legally wedded wife of the accused because the marriage itself was invalid, although it recognised the child as his daughter and awarded her maintenance of ₹2,000 per month. Aggrieved by the decision, the Hindu woman approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Allowing her revision petition, Justice Gajendra Singh on 22nd June, 2026 held that the Family Court had committed an illegality by denying maintenance to a woman who had been deceived into marriage after the accused concealed his religious identity. The Court observed that such an approach resulted in further victimisation of a woman who had already suffered cruelty at the hands of the respondent. It also rejected the lower court's assessment of the accused's income, noting that he earned approximately ₹1 lakh per month through his work as a gym trainer and other business activities. Taking these factors into account, the High Court awarded the Hindu woman maintenance of ₹10,000 per month and enhanced the maintenance payable to her daughter from ₹2,000 to ₹10,000 per month, effective from the date of filing of the maintenance application.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This incident has been added to the tracker under the category Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within this, the first subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu. Within this, the tertiary categories selected are: Name changed and Marries as per Hindu rituals. 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 malafide 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 is: Forced conversion after marriage. 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 parties are 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 her 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 her religion and give up her religious identity. In both situations, there is 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, 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. The other subcategory selected is: Assault and threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. This incident has been classified as a hate crime due to multiple religious markers. Firstly, because the victim was deceived into entering a marital relationship after the accused deliberately concealed his Muslim identity and presented himself as a Hindu. The religious motive of the crime is evident from the fact that the Muslim perpetrator deliberately hid his real identity and pretended to be a Hindu in order to gain the trust of the Hindu victim. If religion had no role in the crime, there would have been no need for him to conceal his faith and present himself as a Hindu. The deception worked precisely because he knew that sharing the same religious identity would make the victim more comfortable, trusting, and willing to interact with him. This makes the victim's Hindu identity central to the offence. The perpetrator did not simply lie about his name or personal details. He specifically used a false Hindu identity as a tool to approach, manipulate, and exploit a Hindu victim. The fact that he felt the need to pose as a Hindu shows that he understood the importance of religion in the victim's life and deliberately exploited it for his own benefit. The deception also reflected a deeper disregard for Hindu beliefs and community trust. Rather than respecting the victim's religious identity and her right to make informed choices, the perpetrator treated her faith as an obstacle to be bypassed through dishonesty. Hindu identity was reduced to a disguise that could be adopted whenever it became useful. Such conduct demonstrates contempt for the religious boundaries, customs, and values that the victim was entitled to rely upon while deciding whom to trust. It is also significant that the perpetrator specifically targeted a Hindu victim through a fabricated Hindu identity. The entire deception depended upon exploiting the trust associated with being Hindu. This shows that the victim's Hindu identity was not incidental to the crime but one of the factors that made her a target. The perpetrator consciously chose a method that weaponised Hindu identity itself in order to gain access, influence, and control. For this reason, the offence carries clear religiously aggravating elements. The perpetrator's ability to target and exploit the victim depended on religious deception and the manipulation of trust associated with Hindu identity. This demonstrates that the victim's religion was not incidental to the crime but one of the key factors that enabled it. In cases like these, the tactic of adopting a false Hindu identity to manipulate and "ensnare" a Hindu individual is not just an act of personal betrayal but can also be interpreted as an expression of disdain or disregard for Hinduism and its customs that reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. The second religious marker is that the accused married the victim according to Hindu rituals while continuing to conceal his real identity. The marriage was performed in accordance with Hindu customs only because the victim believed she was marrying a fellow Hindu. By participating in Hindu rituals under a false identity, the accused allegedly misused and exploited those very religious customs to legitimise a relationship that had been secured through deception. This further demonstrates that Hindu beliefs and practices were not respected but were instead used as instruments to facilitate the fraud. The third and most significant marker is that, once his real identity was discovered, the accused allegedly began pressuring the victim to convert to Islam. According to the complaint, he repeatedly demanded that she embrace Islam and subjected her to physical violence when she refused. He also threatened to kill her parents and later attempted to abduct her from a Shiv temple. This was an arm-twisting tactic to coerce the victim into complying with his conversion demands. 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 exact date of when the Hindu woman and the Muslim perpetrator first came into contact was not specified in the available sources. However, the year of initial contact was indicated as 2020. The tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. In this case, 22nd June 2020 has been used as the indicative incident date, derived by aligning the known year with the date on which the Madhya Pradesh High Court granted maintenance to a woman. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only.