Hindu woman abducted, raped, forcibly converted to Islam through inducements and brainwashing by Muslim man in Saharanpur

Case ID : 30a9923 | Location : Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 24 July, 2026

Case ID : 30a9923

Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

24 July, 2026

Hindu woman abducted, raped, forcibly converted to Islam through inducements and brainwashing by Muslim man in Saharanpur

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Case Summary

A Hindu woman from the Chilkana police station area of Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh was kidnapped, raped, and forcibly converted to Islam by a Muslim man. The accused was identified as Shaukeen, son of Mustakeem, a resident of Firozabad village under the Chilkana police station area. The accused lured the victim with false promises of financial assistance, employment, and material comforts before brainwashing her and forcing her to convert to Islam. He also subjected her to rape. According to media reports, on 25 July 2026, the victim's father lodged a complaint at Chilkana police station regarding the kidnapping, rape, and forced religious conversion of his daughter. According to Superintendent of Police (City) Vyom Bindal, the accused had lured away the victim before brainwashing her and forcing her to convert to Islam by offering her inducements, including promises of financial assistance, employment, and material comforts. Based on the complaint, police registered a case against the accused under Sections 87, 64(1), and 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with Sections 3 and 5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021. Acting on the directions of the Senior Superintendent of Police and under the supervision of the Superintendent of Police (City) and the Sadar Circle Officer, a police team led by Station House Officer Vinod Kumar launched an investigation. Acting on a tip-off, police cordoned off the Kachcha-Pakka Dumjhera–Pather road and arrested the wanted accused, Shaukeen. Police completed the necessary legal formalities against the accused and initiated the process of producing him before the court. During the investigation, police recovered the victim's original Aadhaar card, PAN card, an affidavit relating to her religious conversion, and a new Aadhaar card issued after the conversion from the accused's possession. The recovered documents were seized and made part of the investigation, with police stating that they could prove to be crucial evidence in the case. At the time of writing this report, the investigation remained ongoing, and police stated that further action would be taken based on the facts that emerged during the investigation while other aspects of the case were also being probed. A post on X by journalist Raju Sharma also revealed that the accused had similarly targeted several Hindu girls by brainwashing them with what he described as "the virtues of Islam" before abducting and luring them with promises of money in an attempt to convert them.

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 is - Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. The second sub-category selected is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being - Pattern of targeting Hindus. 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. This case has been classified as a religiously motivated hate crime because the offences committed against the Hindu victim culminated in her forced conversion to Islam. The sequence of kidnapping, rape, psychological manipulation, and conversion indicates that the offence extended beyond crimes committed against an individual and involved the deliberate alteration of the victim's religious identity through coercive means. As a Hindu woman, her religious identity formed an integral element of the offence, making it relevant to Hinduphobia Tracker's classification. The case also falls under predatory proselytisation because the conversion was pursued through inducement rather than through the victim's independent and informed exercise of religious choice. The accused exploited the victim's socio-economic vulnerabilities by luring her with promises of financial assistance, employment, and material comforts to secure her conversion to Islam. Offering material benefits to induce a person to abandon their existing faith is not an act of charity, goodwill, or voluntary assistance. Rather, it is a coercive method of religious conversion that exploits an individual's circumstances to influence their religious identity. In this case, the inducements were not extended for the victim's welfare but were used as a means to strip her of her Hindu faith and replace it with Islam. Such conduct demonstrates that the perpetrator had no respect for the victim's Hindu identity and instead sought to exploit her vulnerabilities to secure her religious conversion. The victim's Hindu identity was therefore not incidental to the offence but constituted one of its central targets, making this a religiously motivated hate crime. The case further falls under religious brainwashing because the victim was subjected to psychological manipulation and brainwashing aimed at weakening her attachment to her Hindu faith and securing her conversion to Islam. Religious brainwashing is not a mere attempt at persuasion; it involves the deliberate use of manipulative psychological methods to erode an individual's existing religious convictions and replace them with another faith. Such conduct interferes with an individual's ability to exercise genuine freedom of conscience by systematically targeting their religious beliefs rather than respecting them. In this case, the brainwashing was directed specifically at altering the victim's Hindu religious identity, demonstrating that her faith itself was the object of the perpetrator's actions. The use of psychological manipulation as a means to secure religious conversion reflects a deliberate disregard for the victim's right to retain her religious identity and reveals an intention to replace her Hindu faith with Islam through coercive means rather than through a free and informed choice. By targeting the victim's religious beliefs through sustained manipulation, the perpetrator treated her Hindu identity as something to be erased and substituted, making her religion a central component of the offence. For these reasons, the use of religious brainwashing in this case constitutes an important indicator that the offences were religiously motivated and forms a significant basis for classifying the incident as a hate crime targeting a Hindu victim. The victim was also subjected to sexual violence during the course of the offences, making this case an instance of religiously motivated sexual violence. In the context of this incident, the rape cannot be viewed merely as an act committed for sexual gratification in isolation. Rather, it formed part of the continuous sequence of acts that culminated in the victim's forced conversion to Islam. Sexual violence used alongside kidnapping, psychological manipulation, and religious conversion serves to inflict profound physical and psychological trauma, weaken the victim's resistance, and increase her vulnerability to coercion. By subjecting a Hindu woman to sexual violence before forcing her to abandon her faith, the perpetrator used rape as a means of domination and control within a broader process aimed at erasing her existing religious identity. The sexual assault was therefore not merely an offence against the victim's bodily autonomy but also an attack intertwined with the objective of stripping her of her Hindu identity and replacing it with another religion. The convergence of sexual violence and forced religious conversion demonstrates that the victim was targeted not only as a woman but also as a Hindu woman, making this an instance of religiously motivated sexual violence and an important factor in classifying the incident as a religiously motivated hate crime. This incident also cannot be viewed in complete isolation. Information available in the public domain indicates that the accused similarly targeted several other Hindu women by subjecting them to forced religious conversion. The recurrence of the same methods against multiple Hindu women demonstrates that the victim was not selected at random but formed part of a broader pattern in which Hindu women were singled out for religious conversion through coercive and manipulative means. The repeated targeting of victims belonging to the same religious community indicates that their Hindu identity was central to the perpetrator's conduct rather than merely incidental. This pattern strengthens the assessment that the offences were driven by hostility towards the victims' existing religious identity and reinforces the classification of the incident as a religiously motivated hate crime. The recovery of the victim's original Aadhaar card, PAN card, an affidavit relating to her religious conversion, and a new Aadhaar card issued after the conversion from the accused's possession further strengthened this assessment. These documents indicated that the conversion had progressed beyond an informal or symbolic change and had been accompanied by formal documentation reflecting the replacement of the victim's religious identity. Overall, as this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it is being included in the Hinduphobia Tracker's hate crime database. Disclaimer: The available news reports do not specify when the victim was first contacted, abducted, subjected to religious indoctrination, raped, or forcibly converted. They only establish the date on which the victim's father lodged the complaint and the subsequent police action. Accordingly, the exact commencement date and chronology of the offence could not be determined from the available sources. Hence, 25 July 2026, the date on which the complaint was lodged, has been selected as the indicative incident date.