Hindu woman tricked into marriage after Muslim man poses as Hindu and forces her to convert to Islam in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
2 September, 2015
Case Summary
In Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived by a Muslim man named Shoaib, who posed as a Hindu man. He falsely used the name “Ankit Verma” to establish a relationship, sexually exploited her and married her under false pretences. Upon discovering his real identity, the accused then pressured the victim to convert to Islam. The team at Hinduphobia Tracker contacted the Bajariya Station House Officer to confirm the victim's identity. The SHO confirmed that the victim was a Hindu woman. He also said the victim had earlier filed a complaint at the police station where she stayed, which led to a court case. In 2015, the Hindu woman, then a graduate student, met a man who introduced himself as Ankit Verma and claimed to be Hindu. According to the victim's complaint, their friendship developed into a romantic relationship, and between 2015 and 2018 he repeatedly established sexual relations with her on the promise of marriage. In April 2018, the two married at an Arya Samaj mandir. The woman said that afterwards he took her to Prayagraj, where she discovered his real name was Shoaib and that he belonged to a different religious community. She also discovered that he was already married and had a child. Shoaib then forced her to convert to his religion. He later started drinking alcohol and assaulted her. Distressed by his actions, the victim left the accused in 2021 and began living alone in Unnao. Upon learning of this, the accused began assaulting her at her home and place of work and created disturbances. He subsequently threatened to ruin her life by throwing acid on her and killing her. In March 2026, while she worked as a guard at a hospital, he created a scene there, due to which she lost her job. The woman then filed a complaint with the police and requested strict action against the accused. Acting on her complaint, police registered a case at Bajariya police station. According to Station House Officer Arvind Sharma, police registered the case on the woman’s statement and initiated action against the accused. Legal proceedings were said to be underway at the time of documenting this incident.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The incident has been added to the tracker under the primary category: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within this, the subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu, and the tertiary category selected is: Name changed. 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 mala fide 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 next subcategory is: Forced conversion after marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to any Abrahamic faith, like Islam, begins after marriage. 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. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither parties are required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert her religion after marriage. 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, there is application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing, however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. The other sub-category 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 pressuring 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 religious dimension of the case lay in the deliberate use of a false Hindu identity to gain the victim’s trust. The deception denied her the opportunity to make an informed choice about the religious identity of the person with whom she entered into a relationship. The significance therefore did not lie in the interfaith nature of the relationship, but in the deliberate concealment of religious identity as a means of establishing the relationship. The deception acquired a specific religious character when it was followed by pressure to convert to Islam. It also indicated that the victim’s Hindu identity was not incidental to the relationship, but formed part of what the accused initially targeted. By presenting himself as a Hindu, he used her religious identity to gain her trust and enter into a relationship with her. The subsequent pressure to convert showed that the same religious identity that was initially targeted through deception later became the object of coercion. This gave the deception a specific religious purpose and distinguished it from an ordinary case of relationship fraud or concealment of personal information. The subsequent threats reinforced the coercive nature of the conduct. The accused threatened to throw acid on the victim and kill her. A threat of an acid attack carried the possibility of severe and permanent physical injuries, disfigurement and lasting psychological trauma, while the threat to kill her directly endangered her life. These were not minor threats intended merely to intimidate her. They were intended to make the victim give up her resistance, submit to the accused’s demands and refrain from asserting her own choices. The severity of the threats showed the extent to which coercion was used to force her submission. The fact that the threats began after the victim discovered the accused’s real identity and resisted further coercion was particularly significant. It indicated that the accused did not merely seek to maintain the relationship but wanted the victim to submit to the religious change he demanded. His continued pressure after her resistance showed that he was prepared to use increasingly severe means to achieve that objective. The progression from concealing his religious identity to pressuring the victim to convert, followed by threats of acid attack and death when she resisted, indicated that securing her conversion was a primary motive behind his conduct. The case therefore involved a combination of religious deception, pressure to convert and severe intimidation. The victim’s Hindu identity became a specific target of manipulation, while the threats of acid attack and death demonstrated the seriousness of the coercion used against her. This combination established a religious dimension beyond ordinary relationship abuse and qualified the incident as a hate crime under the tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident date based on when the incident actually occurred, rather than the date on which it was subsequently reported or published. However, the exact date on which the targeting and recording of the Hindu girl began could not be established from the available information, other than that she met the accused in 2015. Since the case was reported on 3rd September 2026, the indicative incident date has been recorded as 3rd September 2015 for documentation purposes only, merging the year of first contact with the date of reporting.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
