Minor Hindu girl abducted and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man amidst rising attacks on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh

Case ID : 30a96ad | Location : Sylhet District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Sun, 5 July, 2026

Case ID : 30a96ad

Sylhet District, Bangladesh

5 July, 2026

Minor Hindu girl abducted and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man amidst rising attacks on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Family claims grooming

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In the Shahparan Police Station area of Sylhet, Bangladesh, a 16-year-old Hindu girl, Tisha Pal, was abducted by a Muslim man named Musa Mia, with the intention of converting her to Islam. According to the victim's family and the General Diary (GD No. 259), the minor Hindu girl,Tisha Pal, the daughter of Kajal Pal of Nayagaon on Borhan Uddin Road under Shahparan Police Station, left her home on 6 July 2026 to visit her sister's house but did not return. After searching for her at relatives' homes and other possible locations without success, her father lodged a General Diary with Shahparan Police Station and also submitted a written application to RAB-9's Sylhet camp seeking the immediate rescue of his daughter. Following the complaint, RAB-9 initiated a shadow investigation into the case. Using information technology and intelligence inputs, the force traced the teenager to an area in Kanaighat upazila, where she was rescued during a raid conducted on 10 July 2026. During the rescue operation, a Muslim man identified as Musa Mia, a resident of Singerkach village in Bishwanath upazila of Sylhet, had kidnapped the victim. The victim's family stated that Tisha had been abducted with the intention of converting her to Islam. Musa Mia was arrested during the same operation on charges of kidnapping. Following the rescue, the authorities initiated the legal process to hand the victim over to her family and proceeded with further legal action against the accused. Officials stated that the exact circumstances of the incident, including the motive behind the kidnapping and the family's assertion that the victim had been targeted for religious conversion, would be established through the investigation. This escalation of violence against Hindus in Bangladesh has unfolded in three distinct phases: first, following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024; second, after the death of Sharif Osman Bin Hadi in December 2025; and third, in the immediate aftermath of the 13th National Parliamentary Election 2026. Following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, multiple reports documented attacks on Hindu homes, temples, and religious institutions, alongside intimidation campaigns, arson, and mob assaults targeting minority neighbourhoods. The Hinduphobia tracker has recorded 336 such incidents against the Hindu minority, underscoring the scale and persistence of anti-Hindu violence during this period. A further escalation occurred following the death of Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, a Muslim political activist and student leader known for his anti-Hindu and anti-India rhetoric. Hadi had been involved in political unrest after the fall of the Hasina government and was killed in Dhaka on 18 December 2025 during clashes. In the aftermath of his death, Hindu communities were blamed and subsequently targeted in retaliatory violence. Hindu homes were selectively set ablaze in multiple localities, forcing families to flee and leaving many displaced. The attacks appeared patterned rather than sporadic, with Muslim mobs focusing on Hindu neighbourhoods, properties, and religious symbols. Among the victims was Dipu Chandra Das, who was lynched to death and his body was set ablaze by a Muslim mob over false blasphemy allegations. The Hinduphobia tracker documented 51 incidents of anti-Hindu violence in the period following Hadi’s death alone. Such incidents underscore the vulnerability of the Hindu minority amid rising communal hostility and the weaponisation of religious accusations. Reports further indicated that posters and written materials calling for the extermination of Hindus were displayed in public spaces, signalling an alarming normalisation of genocidal rhetoric. When combined with acts of arson, vandalism, assault, and targeted intimidation, these developments suggest a coordinated environment of hostility aimed at terrorising the Hindu community and reinforcing majoritarian dominance. The third phase of violence was unleashed after the 13th National Parliamentary Election 2026. Within days of the announcement of results, Hindu families in districts such as Noakhali, Rangpur, Nilphamari, Sylhet, Thakurgaon, and Dinajpur reported coordinated attacks involving arson, looting, assault, and vandalism of temples and homes. In several instances, Hindu homes were selectively targeted, looted, and families were threatened with displacement.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category selected here is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being - Family claims grooming and Conversion of Minor. 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 which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which 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 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 proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here is - Harassment, threats, 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 has been included in the tracker because the Hindu minor girl was abducted by a Muslim man. Furthermore, her family stated that the kidnapping was carried out with the intention of converting her to Islam. The religious dimension of the case arose from the fact that the victim's Hindu identity formed part of the motive behind the abduction. The victim's age is a significant factor in assessing the nature of the offence. It is important to note here that when the accused targeted the victim, she was just a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. Such acts are not merely criminal in nature; they are ideologically charged, revealing religious prejudice and a calculated intent to alter the religious identity of a minor without her volition. The use of grooming, where trust is built only to exploit, is an insidious method that exploits the child’s naivety and dependence. In this context, the testimony of the family, especially that of a close relative like the parents, holds considerable weight. The victim's family stated that the kidnapping was intended to facilitate her conversion to Islam. Religious conversion achieved through abduction or unlawful confinement cannot be regarded as a genuine exercise of religious freedom because the victim's ability to exercise free choice would have been fundamentally compromised by coercive circumstances. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another was a direct attack on her religious identity and dignity. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. The targeting of Tisha Pal must be viewed within Bangladesh’s documented anti-Hindu environment, where vulnerable Hindu individuals have increasingly faced threats to their security, property, religious institutions, and religious identity. The pressure placed on her to abandon his faith and assume a new religious identity reflects the wider concerns faced by many Hindu minorities living under conditions where their religious identity can become a source of vulnerability. Given Bangladesh's sustained anti-Hindu persecution environment, this case meets all thresholds for inclusion in the Hinduphobia Tracker's hate crime database. Taken together, the Hindu minor girl was targeted, abducted and pressured to convert to Islam. Such actions stem 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. Therefore, religious conversions, even of minors, are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime.