Hindu woman deceived, sexually exploited and brutally tortured to convert to Islam by Muslim man posing as Hindu in West Bengal

Case ID : 30a95ab | Location : North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 8 July, 2025

Case ID : 30a95ab

North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, India

8 July, 2025

Hindu woman deceived, sexually exploited and brutally tortured to convert to Islam by Muslim man posing as Hindu in West Bengal

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Forced conversion after marriage

Case Summary

In Titagarh, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, a Hindu woman was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man, Farhan Khan. The accused deceived the victim by concealing his religious identity and posing as a Hindu man named "Rahul". He married the victim, sexually exploited her, impregnated her, and forced her to convert to Islam. She was subsequently subjected to both physical and mental torture. According to reports, the accused was a resident of the Bansbagan area in Ward No. 4 of Titagarh Municipality. To facilitate the deception, Farhan obtained and used forged identity documents, including an Aadhaar card bearing the Hindu name "Rahul". After this, he married the Hindu victim, a resident of Ward No. 5 of Titagarh Municipality, under this false identity. Following the marriage, Farhan took the woman to a rented house near Sodpur railway station, where they lived together for several months. During this period, the woman was sexually exploited, as a result of which she became seven months pregnant. After living with the accused for several months, the woman grew suspicious about his religious identity. Upon discovering that her husband was a Muslim and not the Hindu man he had presented himself to be, she confronted him. Thereafter, Farhan subjected her to mental and physical torture, harassed her, and repeatedly pressured her to convert to Islam. The victim subsequently approached Titagarh Police Station and lodged a written complaint. On 9 July 2026, acting on the basis of her complaint, the Titagarh police arrested Farhan Khan. On 10 July 2026, he was produced before the Barrackpore Court, which remanded him to police custody. The police stated that the case was under investigation and that further legal action would be taken upon completion of the investigation. The victim was accompanied to the police station by Vishwa Hindu Parishad Barrackpore district secretary Pinaki Chattopadhyay, Swami Shivanand Maharaj, and other Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionaries. The organisation demanded a fair investigation into the matter and strict legal action against the accused. According to Pinaki Chattopadhyay, the accused had created an Aadhaar card in the Hindu name "Rahul" in 2025, used it to lure the Hindu woman into a relationship, and subsequently married her while concealing his religious identity. He further stated that after the victim became pregnant, the accused began harassing her and pressuring her to convert to Islam.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being documented in the Hinduphobia Tracker under the primary category: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu, and 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 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. In this case, the Hindu woman was deceived into a relationship and subsequently married by a Muslim man who concealed his religious identity by posing as a Hindu and using forged identity documents bearing the Hindu name "Rahul". The perpetrator's act of deception by assuming a false Hindu identity demonstrates a clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. By concealing his true identity, the accused manipulated the Hindu woman's trust and deliberately targeted her under false pretences, indicating a premeditated effort to exploit her because of her religious background. The marriage, solemnised under a forged Hindu identity, legitimised the relationship in the eyes of the victim and the wider Hindu community. This constituted a direct violation of her right to make an informed decision regarding whom she chose to marry, as well as an infringement upon her religious beliefs. The accused's deliberate decision to obtain forged identity documents and conceal his religious identity strongly underscores the religious motive behind this crime. In such instances, identity concealment is not merely a deceptive tactic for personal reasons but a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling and targeting. The accused was aware that the victim, being Hindu, would likely have refused to enter into a relationship or marry him had she known his real identity, and he circumvented this by fraudulently assuming a Hindu identity. This deception reflects a broader pattern in which Hindu women are specifically targeted through false Hindu identities to secure relationships and marriages that would otherwise not have been possible through honest disclosure. Such targeted victimisation based on religion demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the religious autonomy of Hindu women and points to a clear religious motive behind the deception. The act of sexually exploiting the victim while concealing his religious identity further underscores the religious motive behind the crime. The accused secured the victim's consent to the relationship by fraudulently presenting himself as a Hindu, thereby depriving her of the ability to make an informed choice based on her religious beliefs. The sexual exploitation was therefore inseparable from the religious deception employed by the accused. Rather than being an act driven solely by sexual desire, it was facilitated through the calculated targeting of a Hindu woman by exploiting her religious trust. The concealment of identity enabled the accused to gain intimate access to the victim under false pretences, making the sexual exploitation intrinsically linked to the religious profiling of the victim. This demonstrates that the victim was not targeted merely as a woman but specifically as a Hindu woman. The accused's deliberate use of a forged Hindu identity to establish an intimate relationship indicates that the sexual violence was rooted in religious targeting rather than being an isolated act of personal misconduct. By exploiting the victim only after fraudulently assuming a Hindu identity, the accused weaponised religious deception to violate her bodily autonomy and dignity. Such conduct reflects a conscious disregard for the victim's religious identity and demonstrates that the offence was directed against her because she was a Hindu, making the sexual exploitation a religiously motivated hate crime rooted in anti-Hindu animosity. After the victim discovered that the accused was not the Hindu man he had portrayed himself to be, he did not disclose the truth voluntarily or seek to rectify the deception. Instead, he subjected her to physical and mental torture and repeatedly pressured her to convert to Islam. Such coercion constituted a direct assault on the victim's religious autonomy, freedom of conscience, and fundamental right to choose and practise her own faith. By attempting to compel her to abandon Hinduism through intimidation and abuse, the accused demonstrated that he did not respect the victim's religious identity or her freedom to retain it. Forced religious conversion is not merely an act of coercion but an attempt to erase an individual's religious identity, and in this case, it treated the victim's Hindu faith as something inferior and unworthy of respect. Such conduct clearly points to a religiously motivated hate crime directed against the victim because of her Hindu identity. The fact that the victim was seven months pregnant when she was subjected to this pressure further aggravates the offence. Pregnancy is a period of heightened physical and emotional vulnerability, yet instead of offering care or support, the accused chose this stage to intensify the abuse and pressure the victim to renounce her faith. Exploiting the victim's vulnerable condition to coerce her into religious conversion demonstrates a calculated attempt to maximise pressure at a time when she was least able to resist. Viewed in its entirety, the deception regarding religious identity, the fraudulent marriage, the sexual exploitation, the subsequent torture, and the coercive attempts at religious conversion reveal a continuous and well-planned course of conduct directed against a Hindu woman because of her religious identity. The cumulative circumstances of the case, therefore, demonstrate a clear pattern of religious targeting rather than isolated acts of personal misconduct. Notably, this was not an isolated incident but formed part of a broader and well-documented pattern. Hinduphobia Tracker has previously documented 1,289 similar cases, recorded between 1 January 2023 and 10 July 2026, involving Hindu women being targeted in relationships by Muslim men and subsequently facing pressure or coercion to convert to Islam. In 803 of these cases, the Muslim perpetrators concealed their religious identity and posed as Hindus in order to deceive the victims and gain their trust. In 201 cases, the victims were forced or coerced to convert to Islam after marriage, while in a further 473 cases, they were pressured to convert before marriage. Significantly, 365 of the victims documented in these cases were minors. The striking similarities between this incident and the hundreds of previously documented cases demonstrate that the methods employed in the present case, concealing religious identity, deceiving a Hindu woman into a relationship or marriage, and subsequently exerting pressure for religious conversion, follow an identifiable pattern rather than constituting an isolated occurrence. Overall, since this case satisfies the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it is being included in the Hinduphobia Tracker's hate crime database. Disclaimer: Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the victim's ordeal begins rather than when the incident was reported in the media. However, in this case, media reports did not specify the exact date on which the victim's ordeal commenced. They only stated that the accused had concealed his religious identity and posed as a Hindu approximately one year before the complaint was lodged. The earliest date mentioned in the reports is 9 July 2026, when the accused was arrested by the police. Since the deception and the victim's ordeal had begun about a year earlier, 9 July 2025 has been selected as the indicative incident date for this case. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only and serves as a reasonable estimate of when the victim's ordeal began, based on the information currently available.