Hindu woman lured into relationship, forcibly converted to Islam and threatened by Muslim man pretending to be Hindu in Lucknow

Case ID : 30a9e7d | Location : Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 2 May, 2025

Case ID : 30a9e7d

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

2 May, 2025

Hindu woman lured into relationship, forcibly converted to Islam and threatened by Muslim man pretending to be Hindu in Lucknow

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices

Case Summary

In Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man, Shahrukh alias Raftaar, who concealed his religious identity by posing as a Hindu. After the victim discovered his religious identity, he assured her that he would not force her to convert and that they would continue to follow their respective religions. He later forcibly made her recite the Kalma (Islamic declaration of faith) on the pretext of marriage. The victim later discovered that the accused was already married, and when she confronted him about this, he and his family subjected her to threats and abuse. According to reports, the victim was a Hindu woman from Thawai Tola. She met Shahrukh Khan alias Raftaar through a chat application about a year earlier (2025). At the time, the accused was posing as a Hindu. Their friendship gradually developed into a relationship, after which she discovered his true religious identity. Shahrukh then proposed marriage. When she refused, citing their different religions, he assured her that he would not force her to convert and that they would continue to follow their respective religions. Shahrukh later told her that he would return from Dubai, marry her in Lucknow and take her to Dubai with him. He arranged for an acquaintance to make her recite the Kalma and forcibly convert her to Islam, telling her that both people had to follow the same religion for a nikah to take place. A mehr of ₹786 was fixed, following which she was made to accept the nikah. Shahrukh subsequently treated her as his wife for nearly a year and repeatedly assured her that he would return to Lucknow and marry her. He also gave her his Aadhaar card and pressured her to change her surname on her identity card. The woman later became suspicious after learning that Shahrukh’s family lived in rented accommodation. She contacted his mother and sister to enquire about the marriage. His family initially tried to postpone the marriage. His mother later told her that Shahrukh had entered into an online nikah with a woman named Shazia a year ago (2025), although her rukhsati (the bride’s departure from her parental home to begin married life with her husband) had not yet taken place. The family assured the Hindu woman that Shahrukh would marry her. The woman said that she had submitted a written complaint against Shahrukh and his brother at the Chowk police station on 3 May 2026. About a month later, Shahrukh’s brother Haroon was called to the police outpost. There, Shahrukh’s mother and brother told her that Shahrukh had married Shazia in 2020. He had also had a daughter from the marriage, who later died. The woman said that Shahrukh failed to provide documents relating to his previous marriage, the nikahnama, or the birth and death of his daughter. After the truth about his previous marriage came to light, Shahrukh’s brother Mohammad Ayan alias Sonu called the woman, described the purported nikah with her as invalid and behaved abusively towards her. He also demanded that she return ₹20,000 that Shahrukh had sent towards her medical treatment. He subsequently sent her abusive, obscene and offensive messages on WhatsApp. Distressed by the threats and continued mental harassment, the woman approached the Chowk police seeking justice. She said that Shahrukh and his family members had abused her, sent offensive messages and threatened to kill her after she confronted him about his previous marriage. Based on her complaint, police registered a First Information Report against Shahrukh Khan alias Raftaar, his brother Mohammad Ayan alias Sonu, his mother Saira and his sister Shahnaz. At the time of writing this report, Chowk Inspector Nagesh Upadhyay said that the First Information Report had been registered and that further legal action was underway.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

In this case, the primary category selected is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu. 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 before marriage. The tertiary category selected is: Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices. 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. In this case, the Hindu woman was deceived into a relationship by a Muslim man pretending to be Hindu. After this, he pressured her to recite the Kalma and undergo conversion under the pretext of marriage. This occurred after he had assured her that he would not force her to convert. The perpetrator’s act of deception by posing as a Hindu itself demonstrated a clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim’s religion. By hiding his true identity, the Muslim man manipulated the Hindu woman’s trust and targeted her under false pretences, indicating a deliberate effort to exploit the woman based on her religious background. Additionally, the promise of marriage legitimised the relationship in the eyes of the woman. This constituted a direct violation of her right to informed consent regarding whom she chose to be in a relationship with, as well as an infringement upon her religious beliefs. Thus, the perpetrator’s deliberate decision to hide his religious identity strongly underscored the religious motive behind the crime. In such instances, identity concealment was not just 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 most likely refuse his advances if she knew his real identity, and he circumvented this by lying, which directly pointed to a religiously driven intent. This deception reflected a larger pattern where Hindu women were specifically singled out using false identities by Muslim men, often with coercion or conversion in mind. Such targeted victimisation based on religion not only demonstrated a fundamental disregard for Hinduism but also exposed a deeper hostility towards Hindus and their beliefs. When the victim discovered the perpetrator’s true religious identity and refused to marry him because they belonged to different religions, she clearly expressed her religious boundary and made it known that she was not comfortable marrying a Muslim man. This demonstrated that her original religious boundary was that she wished to marry within her own faith. Despite this, the perpetrator manipulated her by assuring her that religion would not become a barrier to their relationship or future marriage and that she would be allowed to continue practising Hinduism while he followed his own religion. By making these assurances after concealing his Muslim identity, he attempted to overcome a boundary that the victim had explicitly established on religious grounds. The victim was subsequently drawn further into the relationship and a proposed marriage on the basis of these assurances, having initially been unaware that the perpetrator was Muslim. This pattern of concealment, manipulation and subsequent pressure for conversion demonstrated predatory conduct and indicated that the Hindu woman was specifically targeted in a context where her religious identity was central to the relationship. The fact that the victim was subsequently made to recite the Kalma and was led to believe that a nikah would take place demonstrated a further escalation of the religious coercion she faced. The perpetrator told her that both people had to follow the same religion for a nikah to take place, despite having previously assured her that he would not force her to convert. She was therefore made to recite the Islamic declaration of faith in the context of the promised marriage, while the perpetrator continued assuring her that he would marry her. Such coercion undermined her religious autonomy and interfered with her right to freely maintain and practise her Hindu faith. Her Hindu identity, which she had expressly sought to preserve when she initially refused the marriage because of their different religions, was effectively treated as an obstacle that had to be overcome before the proposed marriage could proceed. The attempt to make her embrace Islam in order to facilitate the proposed nikah therefore demonstrated deep religious hostility towards her Hindu identity and Hinduism. The perpetrator’s pressure on the victim to change her surname on her identity documents further demonstrated the extent to which he sought to alter her Hindu identity. His conduct was not limited to pressuring her to recite the Kalma; he also sought to influence how she was identified on her legal documents while continuing to promise that he would marry her. This indicated an attempt to impose a new identity upon her and strip away visible markers of her Hindu identity. The effort to alter even her legal identity therefore represented a further intrusion into her personal and religious autonomy. Taken together with the pressure to convert, this demonstrated an attempt to erase her Hindu identity and reinforced the religiously driven nature of the abuse she experienced. The fact that the victim later discovered that the perpetrator was already married further exposed the deceptive nature of his conduct and the proposed marriage. Despite already having a wife, he had concealed this from the Hindu woman while drawing her into a relationship, promising to marry her and taking steps towards a proposed nikah, including having her recite the Kalma and fixing a mehr of ₹786. He continued to assure her that he would return from Dubai, marry her in Lucknow and take her to Dubai with him. The discovery that he was already married therefore demonstrated the extent of the deception surrounding his promises. Rather than treating the victim as a genuine prospective partner, his conduct indicated that he had drawn her further into a relationship in which her trust and religious identity were exploited while repeatedly holding out marriage as an assurance. When the victim confronted the perpetrator and his family after discovering the truth about his previous marriage, she was subjected to abusive behaviour, threats and offensive messages, while his brother described the proposed nikah as invalid. This further compounded the ordeal she had already endured after being deceived about the perpetrator’s identity and pressured towards conversion. Instead of acknowledging the deception and supporting the victim, members of the perpetrator’s family sided with him and subjected her to further abuse after she sought answers about the relationship. Their response added another layer of intimidation and harassment to the victim’s experience. Viewed alongside the deception, pressure to convert, attempted alteration of her identity and subsequent threats, this demonstrated a coordinated pattern of religiously hostile conduct against the victim. Taken together, the circumstances of the case met the parameters for its classification as a hate crime. Therefore, it was added to the Hinduphobia Tracker’s hate crime database as a religiously driven hate crime against a Hindu woman. 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. In this case, media reports stated that the perpetrator first met the victim and gradually lured her into a friendship and subsequently into a relationship approximately one year earlier, placing the beginning of the ordeal in 2025. The only other specific date mentioned in the reports was 3 May 2026, when the victim submitted her initial complaint. Based on these two pieces of information, 3 May 2025 has been selected as the indicative incident date. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only. The total perpetrator count in this case is recorded as 4. This comprises the main accused, Shahrukh Khan alias Raftaar, and his brother Mohammad Ayan alias Sonu, mother Saira and sister Shahnaz, all of whom were named as the perpetrators in the First Information Report.