Hindu woman raped on pretext of marriage, pressured into abortion and religious conversion in Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh
Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India 
29 August, 2026
Case Summary
In Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was subjected to rape on the false pretext of marriage, a forced abortion, and attempted religious conversion by a Muslim man named Gulfam Sheikh and his family members in the Kohandaur area. The victim, originally from Raebareli, was previously married to a man in Dharmapur and had converted her religion during that marriage. Following her divorce, she resided in a rented house in Kohandaur Bazar, where she came into contact with Sheikh, a married resident of Pureramdev Narharpur. Sheikh established physical relations with the victim by promising to marry her, which resulted in her pregnancy. Upon learning of the pregnancy, Sheikh and his family members forced the victim to undergo an abortion and pressured her to convert to the religion. Furthermore, the accused stole her gold jewellery and cash, and fabricated official documents to generate a fraudulent identification card under a different name for the victim. Following the victim's formal complaint, the Kohandaur police registered a First Information Report against Sheikh. Circle Officer (City) Ashutosh Mishra and Station Officer Anupam Tripathi confirmed that law enforcement authorities arrested the accused, presented him before the court, and remanded him to judicial custody Hinduphobia Tracker contacted the concerned police station to confirm the victim's identity. Police officials confirmed that the victim is a Hindu woman.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been documented under the selected primary category: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the selected secondary category is: Forced conversion before marriage. 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. This incident qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime because the perpetrator weaponised a romantic relationship to systematically erase the victim’s Hindu identity. The false promise of marriage served as a predatory mechanism to gain physical and emotional control over the victim. Once she became pregnant and vulnerable, the perpetrator and his family shifted from romantic overtures to severe religious coercion, demonstrating that her existence as a Hindu woman was entirely unacceptable to them. The coercion directly fit the pattern of forced conversion before marriage. The demand for the victim to change her religion was weaponised as a non-negotiable condition for her safety and the fulfilment of the promised 'Nikah'. By making her acceptance into the family entirely contingent upon the abandonment of her faith, the attackers exhibited deep-seated hostility toward her Hindu identity, treating it as an impurity that had to be forcibly eradicated rather than respected. The extreme physical violence inflicted upon the victim, specifically the forced abortion, functioned as an instrument of religious and psychological subjugation. This trauma was a calculated tactic to break her resistance to the conversion demands. By violating her bodily autonomy and destroying the pregnancy, the family sought to strip away her agency and render her completely dependent, thereby crushing her ability to oppose their religious dictates. Finally, the fabrication of fraudulent identification documents highlighted the deliberate intent to permanently erase her Hindu identity. By forging an Aadhaar card under a new, non-Hindu name, the perpetrator attempted to legally and socially obliterate her original existence. This administrative manipulation proved that the ultimate objective was not a consensual relationship, but the complete annihilation of her religious identity through deceit, theft, and coercion. Disclaimer: The exact date from which the relationship between the victim and the accused began is not known, as the available reports do not specify when they first came into contact or when their relationship began. The tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. In this case, 30 August 2026 has been used as the indicative date and recorded for documentation purposes only.
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
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
