Hindu minor girl lured, groomed and harassed to convert to Islam and subjected to forced nikah by Muslim man Jabir in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh
Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, India 
20 July, 2026
Case Summary
In Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, a minor Hindu girl belonging to the scheduled caste community was lured away, groomed, and coerced into religious conversion and nikah by a Muslim youth, Jabir. The mother of the victim lodged a police complaint against Jabir, a resident of the same village as the victim, on Tuesday, 21st July 2026, late evening. According to the mother's account provided to the authorities, he coerced the minor girl and sexually assaulted her before carrying out forced religious conversion and nikah. Following the complaint, the Sangrampur police registered a case against the Muslim accused, Jabir, under several serious provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Station House Officer (SHO) Sanjay Singh confirmed that the legal process is underway and police teams are actively conducting a search to locate and arrest Jabir.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory for this case 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 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 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 next subcategory for this case is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. Within this, the tertiary categories selected are: Rape and sexual assault/harassement 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 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. The first subcategory within this is: Brainwashed and/or groomed, and the tertiary categories are: Rape and sexual assault/harassement and Conversion of minor. 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’ in order 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 is a crime, for the purpose of 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 a hate crime. The other subcategory is: Forced conversion before marriage, and the selected tertiary category within this 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 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 represents a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime. By targeting a minor Hindu girl, the perpetrator did not merely commit a personal or opportunistic crime; the act was inherently rooted in hostility toward the victim's religious identity. The deliberate act of forcing a minor to abandon her original Hindu faith through coercion, forced "nikah", and sexual violation directly attacks her fundamental right to observe her own religion. When criminal acts are weaponised to alter a victim’s religious identity, they go beyond ordinary crimes and act as direct attacks meant to humiliate and control a Hindu religious group. The mindset of the accused, Jabir, reflects a calculated intent driven by religious malice and the desire to assert dominance over a Hindu victim. This sequence reveals an underlying Islamic ideological motivation where the victim is viewed as an object for conversion and subjugation. By enforcing a religious marriage and forced conversion upon a minor under duress, the perpetrator's actions stem from a mindset that prioritises the erasure of the victim's Hindu identity and the aggressive expansion of his own faith of Islam through coercive means. The dynamics of this crime highlight the severe impact of grooming, manipulation, and systematic harassment targeted at vulnerable minors. The perpetrator exploited the minor’s age to establish control, shifting rapidly from deceptive lure to overt terror once the victim was isolated. 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 able to critically evaluate information. Moreover, subtle manipulation tactics can be difficult to detect, especially when employed by trusted authority figures in positions of influence. This makes it challenging for parents to identify and address instances of religious manipulation. Consequently, cases involving religious manipulation of minors not only represent an infringement on an individual's religious freedom but also demonstrate a calculated strategy of targeting those who are less able to resist or understand the long-term implications of conversion, making it a significant case of religiously motivated hate crime. For this reason, this case has been added to the tracker.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 1
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
