Hindu woman befriended, raped, and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man in North 24 Paraganas, West Bengal

Case ID : 30a9e73 | Location : North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 11 August, 2026

Case ID : 30a9e73

North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, India

11 August, 2026

Hindu woman befriended, raped, and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man in North 24 Paraganas, West Bengal

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to do Nikah

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Torture of family to force woman to convert

Case Summary

A Hindu woman in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district was raped, extorted and harassed by a Muslim man, Wajid Iqbal. The accused also pressured her to convert to Islam and marry him. Following a complaint by the woman, three members of Iqbal’s family were arrested by the Khardah police after a public uproar in the Sodepur area. According to media reports, the woman, a resident of a prominent housing complex in Khardah and a former student of Barrackpore Air Force School, had developed a friendship with Wajid Iqbal during her school days. The two remained in contact after completing school. According to the woman’s complaint and the police, Iqbal would occasionally borrow money from her and sometimes repay it. On one occasion, he invited her to Dharmatala, telling her that they would spend time there. Instead, he lured her to a banquet hall in Dharmatala, where he sexually assaulted (raped) her. Following the incident, Iqbal demanded ₹30 lakh from the woman, pressured her to convert to Islam and forced her to agree to marry him. When she vehemently refused, he threatened to kill her family. On the night of 12 August 2026, the woman and her mother were shopping near Sodepur railway station when Iqbal’s father, Nasim Alam, and his two brothers, Sakib Iqbal and Asif Iqbal, accosted and harassed them. Hearing the woman’s frantic cries, local residents rushed to the spot and surrounded the three men. They staged a strong protest against them, leading to a large gathering and creating a tense situation in the station area. Upon receiving information, Khardah police reached the spot and rescued the three accused from the angry crowd before taking them into custody. Based on the woman’s formal written complaint, police arrested Nasim Alam, Sakib Iqbal and Asif Iqbal. The three accused were produced before a magistrate at the Barrackpore Sub-Divisional Court the following day and were remanded to judicial custody. At the time of writing this report, the police had launched a manhunt to track down and arrest the prime accused, Wajid Iqbal, who remained absconding.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected is: Crimes against women in relationships or other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is: Forced conversion before marriage. The tertiary category selected 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 the 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 pressurizing 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. The other subcategory selected is: Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The other subcategory selected is: Torture of family to force woman to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is forced to convert her religion. Several methods are used for such forced conversion. The non-Hindu man is often documented to issue threats and even employ violence. One of the ways used by such perpetrators is threatening and/or torturing the family members of the Hindu woman to pressure her to convert. The perpetrators in such cases issue threats to harm or torture the family of the woman. In some cases, there is also violence directed towards the family to force the Hindu woman to convert. Such crimes aim to blackmail the victim into changing her religion by inducing fear of harm to her family. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. This case represented a clear instance of religiously driven hate crime, as the sexual violence, coercion and threats were closely linked to the victim’s Hindu identity. Wajid Iqbal used their friendship to lure her to a different location, where he sexually assaulted her, and then pressured her to convert to Islam and marry him. When she refused, he threatened to kill her family, while his family members also harassed her and her mother. The combination of sexual violence, forced conversion, marriage coercion and threats demonstrated sustained religious hostility towards the Hindu victim and her family. The predatory character of the crime was particularly significant. Even though Iqbal did not conceal his Muslim identity in order to establish a connection with the victim, he used an existing friendship as the means through which he gained her trust and subsequently lured her to a place where she was sexually assaulted. This made the friendship itself predatory in its eventual use: a relationship that appeared to provide familiarity and trust was used to place the victim in a vulnerable situation. The fact that the sexual assault was followed immediately by demands that she convert to Islam and marry the perpetrator further connected the sexual violence with religious coercion. In this context, the assault was not an isolated act of sexual violence but formed part of a wider pattern in which the victim was sexually violated and then subjected to pressure aimed at altering her religious identity. Such conduct constitutes religiously motivated sexual violence where the available facts establish that the victim’s religious identity was integral to the subsequent coercion. The attempt to break down the victim’s resistance through sexual violence, followed by demands for conversion and marriage, placed her in an acutely vulnerable position and sought to undermine her autonomy as a Hindu woman. The act of pressuring the Hindu victim to convert to Islam was itself a manifestation of religious hostility and formed a central element of the crime. The victim had the right to retain her Hindu faith and make decisions about her religious identity freely, yet the perpetrator sought to deprive her of that autonomy by insisting that she abandon Hinduism. This was not simply a disagreement arising from a personal relationship, because the demand specifically targeted a fundamental aspect of who she was as a Hindu woman. By attempting to make the victim renounce her faith against her will, the perpetrator demonstrated a disregard for her religious beliefs and her right to practise and retain her native religion. The demand also reflected intolerance towards her Hindu identity, as her existing faith was treated as something inferior that had to be forcibly removed rather than respected. The use of coercion to achieve religious change therefore transformed the matter from a private relationship dispute into conduct directed at the victim because of her religious identity. It demonstrated hostility towards her religious autonomy and contributed directly to the classification of the incident as a religiously driven hate crime. The demand that the victim convert and then marry the perpetrator further intensified the religious coercion by linking her abandonment of Hinduism directly to the proposed marriage, or nikah. Under traditional Islamic jurisprudence, a Hindu woman who remains Hindu cannot enter a valid marriage with a Muslim man; conversion would therefore be required for the marriage to take place within that religious framework. The fact that the perpetrator pressured the Hindu victim to convert before marrying him consequently indicated that the proposed marriage was being used as a means of institutionalising the forced conversion he sought to impose upon her. Conversion would not remain a temporary or isolated demand but would be incorporated into the foundation of the marriage and thereby given a more permanent character. The marriage itself created an enduring relationship through which the perpetrator could exercise control and dominance over the victim, including over her religious identity. In this context, the demand for conversion followed by marriage demonstrated an attempt to permanently alter the victim’s faith and place her within a relationship structured on terms dictated by the perpetrator. The combination of forced conversion and marriage therefore formed part of a predatory pattern of religious coercion directed at the victim as a Hindu woman. When the victim refused to convert to Islam, the perpetrator threatened to kill her family, further demonstrating the intensity of the religious hostility involved. Her refusal was an exercise of her basic religious autonomy, yet instead of respecting that decision, the perpetrator responded by threatening the lives of those closest to her. The use of her family’s safety as leverage was particularly coercive because it placed the victim in a position where maintaining her Hindu faith was presented as something that could have deadly consequences for her relatives. This was not an ordinary threat arising from a personal dispute; it was made in the context of her refusal to comply with a demand that she abandon her religion. The threat therefore demonstrated a willingness to escalate intimidation when the victim resisted religious coercion and showed that the perpetrator was prepared to use fear and potential violence to overcome her refusal. By attempting to make the victim choose between her religious identity and the safety of her family, the perpetrator sought to strip her of any meaningful ability to exercise her religious freedom. This further strengthened the religiously driven and coercive character of the crime. The harassment of the victim’s mother by members of the perpetrator’s family further demonstrated that the hostility extended beyond the Hindu woman and affected her immediate family. When the victim and her mother were shopping near Sodepur railway station, the victim’s mother was also confronted and harassed by Nasim Alam, Sakib Iqbal and Asif Iqbal. Their involvement showed that the intimidation did not remain confined to the primary perpetrator or to his interactions with the victim. Instead, members of his family became involved in confronting the victim and her mother at a time when the victim had already refused to comply with the demand to convert. This extended the pressure surrounding the victim’s religious decision into her family environment, making her mother a target of the harassment as well. The fact that the consequences reached another member of the Hindu victim’s immediate family reinforced the wider coercive nature of the conduct and demonstrated that the intimidation surrounding her refusal to abandon Hinduism was not an isolated interaction. It therefore added a collective dimension to the religious hostility directed towards the victim and her family. Since this case met the parameters of a religiously driven hate crime, it was added to the Hinduphobia Tracker’s hate crime database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the victim’s ordeal begins rather than when the incident is reported by the media. However, the exact date on which the victim’s ordeal began was not mentioned in the available reports. The only specific date provided was 12 August 2026, when the victim and her mother were confronted and harassed near Sodepur railway station. As this was the earliest documented date in the available timeline, 12 August 2026 was selected as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes. In this case, the primary victim was the Hindu woman; however, her mother was also targeted and harassed during the incident. Therefore, the victim count has been recorded as 2. This remains a conservative estimate and has been recorded solely for documentation purposes based on the available information. The primary perpetrator was Wajid Iqbal, while his family members Nasim Alam, Sakib Iqbal and Asif Iqbal were also involved in the harassment of the victim and her mother. Accordingly, the total perpetrator count has been recorded as 4, comprising Wajid Iqbal, Nasim Alam, Sakib Iqbal and Asif Iqbal. This count has been recorded conservatively and solely for documentation purposes based on the available information.