Minor Hindu student pressured to convert to Islam, blackmailed and assaulted upon refusal to concede to conversion demands
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
7 September, 2024
Case Summary
In Rawatpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a 19-year-old Hindu girl was pressured to convert to Islam. She was blackmailed with photographs taken while wearing a burqa by her neighbour, Ruby Khan and an Arabic teacher named Taufiq, and assaulted upon refusing to renounce her faith. The victim, a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) student, grew up visiting her grandmother’s neighbourhood in Rawatpur, where she became acquainted with Ruby Khan and addressed her as an aunt. About two years before the complaint, Ruby introduced the student to Taufiq, an Arabic instructor from the local Jama Masjid who taught her children. Over time, the student became friends with Ruby and Taufiq and occasionally accompanied them to local tea stalls. One day, when the victim visited Ruby Khan’s home, the latter made the student wear a burqa and took photographs of her. Shortly after, during another outing, Taufiq instructed the student to wear a burqa permanently, live at a mosque, read namaz, and convert to Islam. When the student refused to abandon Hinduism, Ruby and Taufiq physically assaulted her. The pair threatened to circulate the burqa photographs and videos on social media if she did not comply with their demands to convert. The intimidation continued in public, with the accused intercepting and harassing the student on the road. Terrified by the continuous threats and violence, the student stopped attending her college in November 2025, abandoning her degree. She subsequently moved away from her grandmother’s house to live with her parents, but the threats and harassment persisted. The victim belonged to a humble family, with her father working as a private security guard. On 2 September 2026, the student approached the Rawatpur police station to submit a formal complaint detailing the religious coercion, physical assault, and blackmail. While the complaint was being lodged, associates of the accused gathered outside the police station and threatened her with dire consequences. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Qasim Abdi confirmed that the police detained Taufiq for investigation following the complaint.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category selected is- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is- Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion. Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several documented cases, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. This incident qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime because the violence, intimidation, and blackmail were used solely to force a Hindu woman to renounce her faith. The hostility did not stem from an ordinary personal dispute; rather, the victim’s Hindu identity made her a target for systematic proselytisation. When she explicitly asserted her right to remain Hindu, that assertion became the immediate trigger for physical assault. Her faith was treated as something to be dismantled, establishing religious animosity as the primary driver behind the harassment. The first prominent religious marker in this case was the Hindu victim being forced to wear a burqa. In Islamic tradition, the burqa is an overt religious garment representing female modesty and identity. Forcing a non-Muslim girl into this religious attire, photographing her, and then weaponising those photographs served as an intentional tactic to visually erase her Hindu identity. Creating artificial evidence of Islamic conformity gave the perpetrators leverage, as threatening to circulate these images aimed to compromise the victim within her own family and community, turning a distinct religious garment into a tool for social blackmail. The second set of religious markers involved Islamic ritual obligations, specifically the demand to stay at a mosque and perform Islamic prayers. A mosque is a distinct space for Islamic congregational worship, and prayer is one of the faith's foundational pillars. Insisting that a Hindu student take up residence in a place of Islamic worship and practice foreign rituals was a direct effort to replace her native religious way of life with compulsory observance. Demanding submission to these religious practices demonstrated that the perpetrators sought full religious surrender rather than casual accommodation. The severe harassment and disruption of the victim’s normal life illustrated how predatory proselytisation destroys a victim's freedom through relentless fear. The intimidation spilt into public spaces, forcing the young student to forfeit her higher education, restrict her movements, and relocate her residence. In this context, religious coercion operated through total psychological and physical subjugation, ensuring that remaining a practising Hindu came with an unbearable cost to personal safety, dignity, and future opportunities. In a wider social context, this case reflected an established pattern where predatory elements exploit neighbourly trust and social proximity to target young Hindu women for religious conversion. Intimidation, fabricated compromising material, and sustained street-level harassment are frequently used to isolate victims until they succumb to conversion demands. Because the actions were designed to force a Hindu individual out of her faith through humiliation, violence, and institutional religious pressure, the incident met every requirement of a targeted, faith-based hate crime. Disclaimer: The exact date of when the Hindu woman and the Muslim perpetrators first came into contact was not specified in the available sources. However, the year of initial contact was indicated around 2024. The tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred, not when it was reported or published. In this case, 8th September 2024 has been used as the indicative incident date, derived by aligning the known year (2024) with the reporting date and month (8th September). This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only. Disclaimer: The victim is reported to be 19 years old in 2026. However, the available information indicates that she came into contact with the accused and was first pressured to convert in 2024, when she would have been approximately 17 years old. Since this places the beginning of the religious coercion when she was a minor, the case has been classified accordingly.
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 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
