Minor Hindu girl abducted and pressured to convert by Muslim man; accused prohibited her from visiting temples, imposed Islamic practices and burnt image of Hindu goddess
Mormugao, Goa, India 
30 September, 2026
Case Summary
In Mormugao taluka, Goa, a 16-year-old Hindu girl was abducted, held and raped by a Muslim man, who subsequently pressured her to convert to Islam. He also prevented her from following Hindu religious practices, imposed Islamic practices upon her, restricted her access to temples and even burnt a picture of Goddess Lakshmi. According to the victim’s statement to the police, the accused was continuously stalking her and threatened to circulate her compromising photographs on social media. Subsequently, the accused kidnapped her and took her to Solapur, Maharashtra, before moving her to Hospet in Karnataka, where police later traced and rescued her. Police had initially registered a case of kidnapping, but following her statement and medical examination, rape charges and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were added to the FIR. The minor victim stated that the accused continued to threaten her and forced her to have sexual intercourse with him. She said that she had become pregnant four times during this period and that he subsequently began forcing her to convert to Islam, telling her that his family would accept her after she converted. She further stated that he forced her to stop practising Hinduism and instructed her not to wear a bindi or kumkum. He made her wear a black dupatta and cover her face so that she would appear Muslim. He also prohibited her from visiting temples or performing Hindu rituals and told her that if she wanted to pray, she could go to a mosque. The minor further stated that when she brought small pictures of Goddess Lakshmi and Maa Kali into the room, the accused became angry and burnt a picture of Goddess Lakshmi. She also told police that the accused and one of his associates prepared a fake Aadhaar card by changing her name. According to her statement, the accused’s mother and sister advised him to remain in hiding for two years and marry the girl after she turned 18. She stated that the accused would lock her inside a room when he went to work and that he once took her to a dargah, where they stayed for two days, and made her wear a tabeez. The minor was eventually able to obtain access to a phone and contacted police through a friend of her brother, following which police traced and rescued her. As of the date of writing this report, the investigation was ongoing.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The first primary category selected in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories are: Rape and sexual assault/harassment and Conversion of minor. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other 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 cases documented, 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. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The second primary category selected in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is: Brainwashed and/or Groomed. The tertiary categories selected are: Rape and sexual assault/harassment and Conversion of Minor. In our database, we have not added incidents where women have converted to another religion of their free will and no allegations of forced/involuntary conversion have been made. However, there are certain cases of conversion where the consent itself is a result of the brainwashing or grooming of a minor by the non-Hindu perpetrator trying to victimise a woman for her Hindu religious identity. The phenomenon of grooming points to non-Hindu perpetrators identifying their Hindu victims’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them over months and sometimes years, to extract the supposed ‘consent’ in order to convert their religion. In most cases of grooming, the victims are minors or the grooming started when the victim was a minor. In other cases of grooming, the non-Hindu perpetrator brainwashes and grooms a minor victim to extract their trust and then proceeds to rape them repeatedly with the intent of converting them to their faith. It is pertinent to understand here that when the victim is a minor, the ‘consent’ to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult itself is redundant – addressed by POCSO. While every case of conversion of a minor and incidents of establishing a physical relationship with a minor by an adult is a crime, for the purpose of this database, a case would be considered a hate crime only if there is a distinct religious angle to the grooming. For example, in the UK, if a Hindu minor is targeted by Pakistani grooming gangs, it would be considered a hate crime because the victims are specifically targeted owing to their non-Muslim religious identity with the perpetrators being Muslim. In other cases, if a Hindu minor is brainwashed into entering a physical relationship with the non-Hindu adult perpetrator and the family alleges grooming/brainwashing of the minor to convert her religion, it would form a part of this database. If the victim is a Hindu adult, the case would form a part of this database only if the victim herself says that she was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. However, if the victim is deceased (murdered or otherwise), the case would form a part of this database if her family/friends provided testimony that the victim was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. Since these crimes have a distinct religious angle where the victim is being targeted owing to her Hindu religious identity, these cases are considered a hate crime. The other subcategory selected is: Forced conversion before marriage. The tertiary categories selected are: Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices, Forced to go to Mosque, and forced to follow non-Hindu religious practises. 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Desecration of Hindu symbols in relationships. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces insult and desecration of her faith (Hinduism) and its symbol because of the inherent disregard for polytheism of the non-Hindu partner. 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 desecrating the religious symbols of the Hindu partner out of spite for her faith. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. This case demonstrates a pattern of religiously motivated coercion in which a 16-year-old Hindu girl was abducted, sexually assaulted, confined and subsequently pressured to abandon her Hindu faith and convert to Islam. The accused, a 21-year-old Muslim man, threatened the minor with the circulation of compromising photographs before taking her from Goa to Solapur and later to Hospet in Karnataka. ] It is important to note here that the victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. She was under the control of an adult who had abducted her, threatened her, sexually assaulted her and confined her. Her existing Hindu identity was therefore targeted in circumstances where her ability to exercise independent choice was severely restricted. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate. The manner in which the victim was abducted and subsequently isolated also formed an important part of the coercive environment in which the religious pressure took place. She was kidnapped, held captive, raped and impregnated, while being pressured to convert to Islam. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another was a direct attack on her religious identity and dignity. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Furthermore, the combination of sexual violence, threats, confinement and religious pressure placed the victim in a sustained position of vulnerability. These severe forms of exploitation serves a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention was to break the victim down, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she could be converted. This was not random violence; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. The pressure to abandon Hinduism was explicit and extended to the victim's everyday religious practices. By seeking to prevent her from maintaining visible and customary expressions of her faith, like bindi or kumkum, while imposing Islamic practices on her, the accused attempted to control how she understood and expressed her own religious identity. This was particularly significant because the victim was already being held in a coercive environment and had no meaningful freedom to make an independent decision about her faith. The repeated interference with her Hindu practices therefore demonstrated an effort to suppress her existing religious identity and replace it with an Islamic identity. Such deliberate interference with a Hindu minor's religious expression constituted hostility towards her Hindu identity. The incident involving the images of Hindu deities further demonstrates the hostility towards the victim's existing religious identity. The destruction of the image of Goddess Lakshmi was significant because it directly interfered with an object representing the victim's Hindu faith. The significance of this act lay in the fact that it was not merely a prohibition on the victim practising or expressing her religion. Rather, it involved the active destruction and desecration of a representation of Hindu worship. An image of a Hindu deity is an object of religious reverence for devotees, and deliberately burning such an image constitutes an act directed against a tangible representation of their faith. In this context, the act was particularly significant because the victim had brought the images of Goddess Lakshmi and Maa Kali as a means of retaining a connection with her Hindu faith while she was being prevented from following her religious practices. The accused's response was not simply to prevent her from worshipping but to destroy a representation of the deity itself. This active desecration reinforced the hostility towards Hindu religious belief and expression and demonstrated that the conduct extended beyond restricting the victim's religious freedom to directly denigrating and attacking an object of Hindu worship. The destruction of the deity's image therefore constituted a distinct manifestation of religious hatred within the broader pattern of hostility directed towards the victim's Hindu identity. The accused's reported use of an Islamic religious setting and symbols also formed part of the coercive environment described by the victim. She stated that he took her to a dargah, where they stayed for two days, and made her wear a tabeez. Considered alongside the prohibition on temple visits and Hindu rituals, the instruction to pray at a mosque, and the pressure to convert to Islam, these acts demonstrated that the coercion extended into the religious environment surrounding the minor. The issue was therefore not simply an isolated request that she adopt another faith, but a sustained attempt to distance her from Hindu religious practices while subjecting her to Islamic ones. Furthermore, the alteration of her name was another attempt to change or suppress aspects of her existing identity. It therefore formed part of the broader pattern of control described by the victim. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. Therefore, religious conversions, even of minors, are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim came into contact with the accused. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media, 30 September 2026.
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
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
