Hindu woman pressured to marry and convert to Islam by Muslim man in Saharanpur; accused hurled casteist slurs, threatened to abduct her on refusal
Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
9 September, 2026
Case Summary
In Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman from the Dalit community was lured into a romantic relationship by a Muslim man, identified as Laeeq Ahmed. Ahmed subsequently began pressuring her to marry him and convert to Islam after marriage. When she resisted, he made casteist remarks against her and threatened to forcibly take her away if she refused to comply. The Hinduphobia Tracker team contacted Santosh Tyagi, Station House Officer of Qutubsher Police Station, regarding the incident. Tyagi confirmed the identities of Laeeq Ahmed and his father, Nasir Ahmed, as the accused and confirmed that both had been arrested and sent to judicial custody. He also confirmed that the woman and Laeeq Ahmed had previously been in a romantic relationship. Ravikant Parashar, Circle Officer (First), Saharanpur, also confirmed that a First Information Report had been registered against the father and son and said that further action would be taken based on the facts established during the investigation. According to media reports, on 10 September 2026, the woman went to a market in a village under Qutubsher Police Station along with her niece to purchase some items. Ahmed, who was a resident of the same village, followed the two girls to the market and entered the shop where they were making their purchases. He told the shopkeeper not to take money from the woman and then picked up several packets from the shop and attempted to give them to her. The woman became frightened and left the shop, but Ahmed followed her outside and began abusing her. He told her that he wanted to marry her and that she would have to convert to Islam after the marriage. He also threatened to forcibly take her away if she refused. During this, he made a casteist remark against her. Frightened and crying, the woman took shelter at a nearby shop, where she remained for around half an hour. A young man from the same village subsequently passed by. The woman called out to him and asked for help. Ahmed offered the man money, but he refused to accept it. Instead, he accompanied both girls and helped them return safely home. After reaching home, the woman told her family about the incident. Her father then approached Qutubsher Police Station and submitted a written complaint. The complaint detailed Ahmed's pursuit of the woman, his abuse and casteist remark, his pressure on her to marry him and convert to Islam, and his threat to forcibly take her away. The complaint also named Ahmed's father, Nasir Ahmed. According to the complaint, Nasir Ahmed assaulted the woman's father during an altercation when he intervened in the matter. Following the complaint, police registered a First Information Report against Laeeq Ahmed and Nasir Ahmed under the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and other applicable sections. Both accused were arrested and sent to judicial custody.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category selected in this case is: Crime against women in relationships and other sexual crimes, with the subcategory selected as: 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, 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 her 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 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 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 part of the hate tracker, even though it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. Another primary category selected is: Hate Speech against Hindus. The subcategory selected is: Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem out of inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith, therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. Another primary category selected is: Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory selected is: Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim. In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. In this case, a Hindu woman was targeted by a Muslim man, Laeeq Ahmed, who pressured her to marry him and convert to Islam. His conduct was accompanied by threats of forcibly taking her away if she refused, casteist abuse directed at her, and subsequent violence against her father when he intervened. The sequence of conduct demonstrated that the woman was targeted not merely in the context of a personal dispute, but in a manner that directly interfered with her Hindu religious identity, personal autonomy and dignity. The fact that the woman had initially been lured into a romantic relationship by Ahmed with the intent of subsequently pressuring her to convert to Islam demonstrated deep-seated religious hostility towards her faith from the outset. The relationship was not merely an interfaith relationship between two individuals of different religions, as the subsequent conduct showed that her Hindu identity was specifically targeted with the objective of bringing about a religious change. When a Hindu woman is lured into a relationship and subsequently subjected to pressure to abandon her faith, the conduct demonstrates that she had been religiously profiled and targeted in a predatory relationship with the intent of effecting her religious conversion. Such targeting treats her Hindu identity as an obstacle that has to be removed rather than a faith that is entitled to be respected, making the conduct religiously driven and anti-Hindu in nature. The demand that the woman marry Ahmed and convert to Islam further demonstrated a direct violation of both her religious and personal autonomy. Religious conversion is voluntary and meaningful only when it is undertaken through a person's own conviction, free will and informed choice. In this case, however, the woman was pressured to abandon Hinduism and adopt Islam as a condition of the proposed marriage. Her refusal was met with continued harassment, threats and coercion rather than respect for her decision to retain her faith. Such conduct violates her religious autonomy and her right to freely practise and retain her Hindu faith. It also treats Hinduism as a faith that she is expected to discard in order to enter the relationship, rather than respecting her religious identity as an integral part of her personhood. The attempt to forcibly bring about such a religious change demonstrated deep-seated disdain towards her Hindu identity and sought to deprive her of the freedom to determine her own faith. The coercive conversion demand therefore constituted a clear religiously driven element of the crime and made the incident an anti-Hindu hate crime. When the woman refused to marry Ahmed and convert to Islam, she was threatened with being forcibly taken away and was subjected to casteist slurs. The escalation from pressure to threats when she asserted her right to retain her Hindu faith demonstrated that her refusal was not respected and that coercion was being used to overcome her decision. The threat of abduction sought to deprive her of her personal liberty and create fear for refusing the demand to abandon Hinduism, while the casteist abuse further degraded her as a member of the Hindu community. The combination of religious coercion, threats and caste-based abuse demonstrated hostility towards her identity as a Hindu woman and intensified the discriminatory and degrading nature of the attack. Here, it is important to acknowledge that some may argue that a caste-specific slur targeted the victim’s micro-identity as a member of the Dalit section of the Hindu community rather than her Hindu identity itself. However, in the context of Abrahamic religions, micro-identities such as caste, region and language are secondary to religious identity, which serves as the primary basis for animosity towards Hindus. In this case, while Laeeq Ahmed hurled casteist slurs at the victim, his animosity was directed at her Hindu identity. The fact that he pressured the Hindu woman to marry him and convert to Islam, and threatened to forcibly abduct her when she refused, demonstrated that her religious identity was central to the coercion, making this an example of an anti-Hindu hate crime. The victim's father was also subjected to violence by Ahmed's father, Nasir Ahmed, when he intervened in the matter after learning what had happened to his daughter. The targeting of a Hindu family member who intervened to protect the victim further demonstrated the hostile environment surrounding the religiously driven coercion. Violence against those who attempt to protect Hindu victims from such coercion and predatory conversion seeks to silence resistance and create fear among families and communities that standing up for another Hindu victim can itself invite retaliation. Such intimidation undermines the ability of Hindus to oppose religiously motivated coercion and reinforces an atmosphere of insecurity around those who intervene to protect Hindu women from targeted attempts to alter their faith. The attack on the victim's father therefore formed part of the broader pattern of intimidation surrounding the targeting of the Hindu woman and further supported the religiously driven nature of the incident. Since this case met the parameters of a hate crime, it was added to the Hate Crime Database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. 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, in this case, media reports have not stated the exact date when the victim and the accused entered into a relationship. The only specific date mentioned in the available information is 10 September 2026, which is the earliest date available. Henceforth, this date has been selected as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes only. In this case, although the main victim was the Hindu woman, her father was also subjected to assault when he intervened in the matter. Henceforth, the victim count has been recorded as two for documentation purposes only. Similarly, although the main perpetrator was the Muslim man, Laeeq Ahmed, his father, Nasir Ahmed, also took part in the hate crime by assaulting the victim's father when he intervened. Hence, the perpetrator count has been recorded as two for documentation purposes only.
Victim Details
Total Victim
2
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 1
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 2
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 2
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
