Hindu woman sexually exploited on the pretext of marriage, pressured to convert to Islam and offer Namaz, later abandoned

Case ID : 30aa374 | Location : Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 6 September, 2025

Case ID : 30aa374

Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, India

6 September, 2025

Hindu woman sexually exploited on the pretext of marriage, pressured to convert to Islam and offer Namaz, later abandoned

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices

Leaves Hindu partner upon refusal to convert

Case Summary

In Dataganj, Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman, a resident of Shahjahanpur, was sexually exploited by a Muslim man on the pretext of marriage and pressured to convert to Islam and offer Namaz. The Hindu victim, Poonam, who was living separately from her estranged husband in Dadri with her three children, came into contact with the Muslim accused while both were residing in Dadri. Trusting his assurance that he would marry and support her, she initiated divorce proceedings against her husband, following which the accused established physical relations with her over the course of about a year. During the relationship, the accused pressured the Hindu woman to abandon her faith and adopt Islam. He repeatedly asked her to offer Namaz, but she refused. He also subjected her to abusive behaviour, used abusive language during phone calls, and continued to harass her after she resisted his demands. The accused later refused to continue the relationship, claiming that he was involved with another woman, and returned to his native village in Dataganj. The victim stated that she had even severed ties with her maternal family at his insistence, leaving her socially isolated and vulnerable. Following the continued harassment and the pressure for religious conversion, the Hindu woman approached the police seeking protection for herself and her three children, along with strict legal action against the accused. The complaint was initially received at the Dataganj Police Station in Budaun, where an inquiry was initiated. Since the events giving rise to the complaint occurred while both parties were residing in Dadri, the case was subsequently transferred to the Dadri Police Station in Gautam Buddh Nagar for further investigation, as confirmed by the SI of the Budaun Police Station during the fact-finding investigation conducted by the Hinduphobia Tracker team.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected for this case is: Crime against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected for this case is: Forced conversion before marriage. The tertiary category selected for this case is: Forced to follow non-Hindu 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, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert to his 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 to his 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 pressuring 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 next subcategory selected is: Leaves Hindu partner upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces pressure/threats/violence to convert and change her religious identity by the non-Hindu man. However, when the Hindu woman refuses to convert, the non-Hindu man ends the relationship or divorces the woman, as the case might be. 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 change her religious identity and, upon her refusal, ends the relationship. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat after she refuses to convert to Islam are not considered part of the hate tracker. This case qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime because the relationship became a vehicle for pressuring a Hindu woman to surrender her religious identity and adopt Islam. The central issue was not merely the breakdown of a personal relationship, but the fact that acceptance of the woman became conditional upon her willingness to move away from her Hindu faith and conform to the religious expectations of the Muslim man. The pressure to offer Namaz made the religious coercion explicit. Compelling or pressuring a Hindu woman to participate in the religious practices of another faith, despite her refusal, directly interfered with her freedom to preserve and practise her own religion. The conversion pressure therefore operated through both ideological insistence and the attempted imposition of non-Hindu religious practices within the relationship. The case also reflected a serious pattern of emotional and financial dependency created through the promise of marriage and future support. The Hindu woman had come to rely heavily on the Muslim man because he assured her that he would marry her, take care of her and provide stability. On the strength of those assurances, she reorganised major aspects of her personal life and weakened her existing support system. When he later abandoned her and stated that he was involved with another woman, she was left completely helpless, emotionally vulnerable and without any meaningful support system, making the deception particularly exploitative. The fact that the relationship deteriorated after she resisted conversion further strengthened the religious nexus. Her refusal to relinquish her Hindu identity became a decisive point of conflict, while the emotional and financial dependence created through promises of marriage magnified the coercive pressure placed upon her. The case therefore fell within forced conversion before marriage, forced adherence to non-Hindu practices, harassment and coercion for conversion, and abandonment of a Hindu partner upon refusal to convert. Such acts are carried out by Muslim perpetrators due to indoctrination by Islamic theology, which advocates that all non-Muslims (referred to as kafirs) are inferior and subject to subjugation unless they convert to Islam or live under Islamic rule (dhimmitude). These ideas are not mere abstractions; they manifest in actions where non-Muslims, especially Hindus in India, are seen as targets for religious domination, coercion, or humiliation. This theological framework fosters an "us versus them" mindset, in which any assertion of Hindu identity or religious freedom is seen not only as undesirable but as a threat to Islamic supremacy. As a result, perpetrators who are shaped by such teachings feel justified, even morally obligated, to harass, suppress, or violently attack Hindus, particularly when Hindus assert their religious rights or resist conversion. As a result, Muslim perpetrators invoke such doctrines to justify coercive attempts to convert non-Muslims, particularly Hindus, portraying conversion as a means of abandoning Kufr (a state of disbelief in Islam or disbelief in Islam) and attaining salvation. Such acts, therefore, are not isolated but driven by a broader ideological hostility towards Hindus as non-believers and reflect an attempt to impose religious dominance. Since this case was also not a random isolated incident of grooming of a minor but a premeditated attack motivated by bias and hatred against the Hindu community, which is a defining feature of hate crimes, this has been added to the tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident date as the date the victim’s ordeal began, rather than the date the incident was subsequently brought to public attention. In this case, the exact date on which the Hindu woman first came into contact with the Muslim man was not specified in the news sources. The sources only indicated that the relationship and physical exploitation began approximately one year ago. Therefore, 7th September 2025 has been recorded as the indicative incident date by the Hinduphobia Tracker for documentation purposes only.