Hindu woman raped and forced to convert by her Muslim brother-in-law; accused had also previously converted and married victim's elder sister
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India 
2 July, 2026
Case Summary
In Vikasnagar, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was raped, assaulted, and forced to convert to Islam by her Muslim brother-in-law. Prior to this, the accused had lured, forcibly converted, and married the victim's elder sister. When the two sisters resisted the Muslim man, they were abused, physically assaulted, and threatened with death. The accused was arrested, and it was subsequently revealed that 29 criminal cases had previously been registered against him. The incident came to light when the Hindu victim's elder sister lodged a complaint on 3 July 2026. In the complaint, she stated that the accused, identified as Ziauddin, had raped her younger sister when she had visited their home some time earlier. He sexually assaulted her and forced her to convert to Islam. When the victim resisted, he assaulted and blackmailed her and continued to sexually exploit her. Thereafter, the younger Hindu victim narrated her ordeal to her elder sister. The elder sister also revealed that nine years earlier, the accused had lured her, forcibly converted her to Islam, and made her undergo a nikah (Islamic marriage). Thereafter, when the two sisters protested, the accused assaulted them, abused them, and threatened to kill them. Following this, the elder sister filed a complaint at the Vikasnagar Police Station. The police registered a case under the relevant sections pertaining to rape, assault, criminal intimidation, and the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Act and began an investigation. During the investigation, it was discovered that the accused had 29 criminal cases registered against him, including offences relating to robbery, theft, forgery, gangsterism, and the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, across various police stations in Lucknow. He was produced before a court and remanded to judicial custody. Sub-Inspector Jitendra Kumar Singh and his team arrested the accused, Ziauddin, on Sunday, 5 July 2026, from a tea stall near the railway crossing on the Sitapur Road–Itaunja route. According to the police, the accused was originally from Kamalapur Gawaiya village in Sitapur district and had been residing in the Tedhi Pulia area of Lucknow.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the first primary category “Predatory Proselytisation”. Within it, the sub-category selected 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 in discriminatory grounds, which have 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 documented cases, 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 subcategory selected is “Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination". Under this, the tertiary categories are " Pattern of targeting Hindu women, Rape and sexual assault/harassment”. 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 that is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust that 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 the 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 proselytisation, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The second primary category selected is “Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". Within this, the subcategory selected is "Forced conversion before marriage". Under this, the tertiary category is “ Forced to do Nikah”. 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 to his 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 to his 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. Another subcategory selected in this case is - Brainwashed and/or groomed. In our database, we have not added incidents where women have converted to another religion of their free will, and no allegations of forced/involuntary conversion have been made. However, there are certain cases of conversion where the consent itself is a result of the brainwashing or grooming of a minor by the non-Hindu perpetrator trying to victimise a woman for her Hindu religious identity. The phenomenon of grooming points to non-Hindu perpetrators identifying their Hindu victims’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them over months and sometimes years to extract the supposed ‘consent’ to convert their religion. In most cases of grooming, the victims are minors, or the grooming started when the victim was a minor. In other cases of grooming, the non-Hindu perpetrator brainwashes and grooms a minor victim to extract their trust and then proceeds to rape them repeatedly with the intent of converting them to their faith. It is pertinent to understand here that when the victim is a minor, the ‘consent’ to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult itself is redundant – addressed by POCSO. While every case of conversion of a minor and incidents of establishing a physical relationship with a minor by an adult are crimes, for this database, a case would be considered a hate crime only if there is a distinct religious angle to the grooming. For example, in the UK, if a Hindu minor is targeted by Pakistani grooming gangs, it would be considered a hate crime because the victims are specifically targeted owing to their non-Muslim religious identity, with the perpetrators being Muslim. In other cases, if a Hindu minor is brainwashed into entering a physical relationship with the non-Hindu adult perpetrator and the family alleges grooming/brainwashing of the minor to convert her religion, it would form a part of this database. If the victim is a Hindu adult, the case would form a part of this database only if the victim herself says that she was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. However, if the victim is deceased (murdered or otherwise), the case would form a part of this database if her family/friends provided testimony that the victim was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. Since these crimes have a distinct religious angle where the victim is being targeted owing to her Hindu religious identity, these cases are considered hate crimes. The third primary category selected is "Attack not resulting in death". The subcategory selected is "Attacked for refusal to convert". When there is pressure, threat or coercion employed upon the Hindu victim to convert to a different religion, in several cases, the victim refuses to succumb to the pressure/threats. Once the victim refuses, the perpetrator proceeds to attack/assault the victim owing to his/her refusal to convert. In such cases, the pressure/threat/intimidation/coercion/violence itself is driven by animosity towards the victim’s Hindu faith. The violence then is another hate crime driven by the victim’s refusal to abandon his professed faith, Hinduism, and convert to the religion of a non-Hindu perpetrator. Since the victim’s faith is at the heart of the pressure to convert and the ensuing violence towards the victim, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other subcategory selected is "Attacked for opposing radicals and try to save victim". In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. This case was included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because the religious marker was evident in the deliberate attempt to force the younger Hindu sister to convert to Islam through sexual violence, intimidation, and coercion. This mirrored the manner in which the elder sister had earlier been lured, forcibly converted, and made to undergo a nikah (Islamic marriage). The use of the same methods against two Hindu women from the same family demonstrated that these were not isolated criminal acts but part of a sustained pattern of targeting Hindu women with the objective of severing their religious identity and assimilating them into another faith through force and intimidation. The recurrence of such conduct against members of the same Hindu family further reinforced the conclusion that the victims were targeted because of their religious identity rather than by chance. The present case involved far more than rape. The sexual assault formed an integral part of the coercive process through which the perpetrator sought to force the younger victim to convert to Islam, just as he had previously done with her elder sister. In this context, the rape cannot be viewed as an isolated act of sexual violence motivated merely by lust. Instead, it functioned as a means of breaking the victim's physical and psychological resistance, intimidating her into submission, and compelling her to abandon her Hindu faith. The victim's religious identity was central to the commission of the offence, as the perpetrator specifically targeted a Hindu woman and used sexual violence to degrade, humiliate, and violate her because of that identity. By using rape as a tool to facilitate religious conversion, the perpetrator weaponised sexual violence to erase the victim's existing religious identity and replace it with another through coercion. This makes the assault an act of religious persecution rather than a random crime of sexual violence. The act of forcing the victim to convert to Islam constituted a direct violation of her religious autonomy, freedom of conscience, and fundamental right to profess and practise the religion of her choice. A conversion secured through fear, intimidation, sexual violence, or coercion cannot be regarded as a genuine expression of faith or voluntary belief. Instead, it reflected the perpetrator's belief that the victim's Hindu identity could be discarded and replaced through force, treating her religion as inferior and unworthy of protection. By compelling the victim to renounce her faith against her will, the accused sought to erase a core aspect of her identity and impose a new Islamic identity upon her. Such conduct demonstrated clear religious hostility towards the victim because she was Hindu and constituted a religiously motivated hate crime directed at her faith as much as at her person. The blackmail, physical assault, and death threats directed at the younger Hindu victim after she refused to convert to Islam further demonstrated the religiously motivated nature of the crime. These acts were not isolated instances of intimidation but were employed as coercive tools to compel the victim to abandon her Hindu faith against her will. The perpetrator's willingness to resort to violence, threats, and sustained blackmail when the victim resisted his demands illustrated the extent to which he was prepared to go to break her resolve and erase her Hindu identity through force. Such conduct deprived the victim of her ability to exercise her religious autonomy freely, creating an environment of fear in which she was expected to choose between her personal safety and her faith. The use of intimidation and violence to punish a Hindu woman for refusing to renounce her religion reflected clear religious hostility and transformed the acts of assault and criminal intimidation into components of a broader campaign of religious persecution. The elder sister's account further revealed that the accused had followed a similar pattern of conduct nine years earlier when he lured her into a relationship before forcibly converting her to Islam and making her undergo a nikah (Islamic marriage). The fact that the accused first cultivated a relationship with a Hindu woman before compelling her to abandon her faith demonstrated that the relationship itself was used as a predatory mechanism to facilitate religious conversion rather than being a genuine expression of affection. By exploiting the emotional trust and vulnerability inherent in a romantic relationship, the perpetrator placed the victim in a position where she could be more easily manipulated, isolated, and coerced into renouncing her Hindu identity. The deliberate targeting of a Hindu woman through deception and emotional manipulation, with the ultimate objective of coercing conversion to Islam, reflected clear religious hostility towards her faith. This pattern of conduct demonstrated that the victim was not targeted merely as a woman but specifically as a Hindu woman whose religious identity the perpetrator sought to erase, making the offence a religiously motivated hate crime. The elder sister's forced conversion to Islam and subsequent nikah further demonstrated that the objective extended beyond merely changing her religion. A conversion secured through deception, coercion, or intimidation cannot be regarded as a genuine expression of faith or voluntary belief, as it violated the victim's religious autonomy, freedom of conscience, and fundamental right to practise the religion of her choice. The subsequent nikah institutionalised and reinforced the forced conversion by embedding the victim within a marital framework that depended upon the abandonment of her Hindu faith. Under Islamic law, a non-Muslim woman is required to convert to Islam before a marriage with a Muslim man can be regarded as religiously valid. The fact that the accused first compelled the victim to convert and then made her undergo a nikah demonstrated that the marriage served to consolidate and legitimise the coerced conversion, permanently imposing a new religious identity upon her while making it significantly more difficult for her to reclaim her previous religious identity. Such coercive conversions carried out under the guise of romantic relationships and followed by religious marriage reflected a calculated pattern of religious domination directed against Hindu women and therefore constituted a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime. When the younger sister disclosed her ordeal to the elder sister and both women opposed the accused, they were subjected to physical assault, abuse, and death threats. The violence that followed their resistance was not merely retaliatory but formed a continuation of the coercive campaign directed against two Hindu women who refused to submit to the accused's efforts to dominate and erase their religious identity. Significantly, the elder sister was also assaulted for standing by her younger Hindu sister, supporting her after the sexual assault and attempted forced conversion, and opposing the accused's actions. By targeting both sisters when they resisted, the accused demonstrated a willingness to use violence not only against the direct victim but also against those who sought to protect her and uphold her right to remain Hindu. Rather than ceasing his conduct when confronted, he escalated to intimidation and physical violence in an attempt to silence the victims and suppress any opposition to his actions. The use of assault, abuse, and death threats against both sisters for resisting forced conversion and sexual exploitation demonstrated the extent to which the accused was prepared to go to enforce his objectives through fear and coercion. Viewed alongside the earlier acts of luring, forced conversion, nikah, rape, and coercion, these assaults reinforced the religiously motivated nature of the offences and reflected a sustained pattern of persecution directed at the victims because of their Hindu identity. Accordingly, the violence inflicted upon both sisters constituted an aggravating element of the broader religiously motivated hate crime. Notably, the perpetrator's actions reflected the belief that his own religion was superior and that Hindus should abandon their faith in favour of Islam. His conduct demonstrated a sustained and deliberate effort to convert non-Muslims, particularly Hindu women, by demeaning their existing religious identity and replacing it with his own through deception, coercion, intimidation, sexual violence, and physical assault. His persistence, even in the face of repeated resistance from both sisters, demonstrated that he was unwilling to accept their continued adherence to Hinduism or respect their right to practise their religion freely. Instead, he sought to break their resolve, compel them to renounce their faith, and impose a new religious identity through sustained coercion and violence. The repeated targeting of two Hindu sisters from the same family revealed a clear pattern of predatory behaviour in which vulnerable Hindu women were viewed not as individuals entitled to religious freedom and bodily autonomy, but as targets for religious conversion. Such conduct reflected deep-seated religious hostility towards the victims' Hindu identity and further reinforced the conclusion that the offences were religiously motivated in nature. Additionally, the accused's extensive criminal history, with numerous serious criminal cases already registered against him, demonstrated that the present offence was not an isolated lapse in conduct but formed part of a sustained pattern of criminal behaviour. In this case, that pattern manifested in the systematic exploitation, intimidation, sexual abuse, and coercion of Hindu women with the objective of compelling them to abandon their faith. Moreover, women trapped in such coercive relationships and forced marriages often remain silent because speaking out exposes them to social stigma, family breakdown, financial insecurity, retaliation from the perpetrator, and prolonged legal and social challenges. Many continue to endure abuse for years in the hope of protecting themselves and their families or because they fear further violence if they resist. In many cases, it takes a significant escalation of abuse or a fresh act of victimisation, as occurred in the present case, before the victims find the courage to approach the authorities and disclose the full extent of the persecution they had endured. Taken together, the repeated targeting of two Hindu sisters, the use of sexual violence, blackmail, physical assault, and threats to secure religious conversion, and the sustained effort to replace their Hindu identity established a clear pattern of predatory conversion efforts. The conduct was deliberate, carefully executed, and driven by the objective of compelling Hindu women to forsake their professed faith, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. Therefore, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the date on which the ordeal began. If the exact commencement date is not specified, the earliest verifiable date available in the public record is used for documentation purposes. In this case, the elder victim stated that she had been forced to convert and enter into Nikah approximately nine years earlier; however, no specific date of the conversion or marriage was mentioned in the available sources. The matter came to light only after the younger sister was sexually assaulted and subjected to pressure to convert, following which the victim approached the police. Accordingly, the date of the FIR, 3 July 2026, has been recorded as the incident date for documentation purposes.
Victim Details
Total Victim
2
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 2
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 2
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 2
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Case sub-judice
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
