Hindu family targeted for religious conversion with false promises of money and jobs in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh

Case ID : 30aa9c5 | Location : Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 21 June, 2025

Case ID : 30aa9c5

Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, India

21 June, 2025

Hindu family targeted for religious conversion with false promises of money and jobs in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Case Summary

A Hindu family was targeted for religious conversion by a Christian network in the Vindhyachal area of Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. Operating under the banner of a trust named 'Yeshu Darbar', the accused Vijay Kumar approached Vinay Pratap Singh, a Hindu resident of Bhatra village. The group pressured Singh, his wife, and their two sons to abandon their faith and convert to Christianity. The accused lured the victims into converting by promising them money, jobs, and good health. The conversion efforts were orchestrated by Vijay Kumar, a native of Kerala who functioned as the trustee of the organisation and identified himself as a 'Father'. The network utilised a trust model to mask its activities, operating out of land purchased in the Kalna Gaharwar area in 2003 by an associate named Dharmendra Kumar. Resisting the pressure, Singh submitted a formal complaint to the police on 22 June 2025. Based on his statement, authorities registered a First Information Report against the accused under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021. Following the registration of the case, police initiated an investigation and apprehended two individuals, including a minor, linked to the network on 23 June 2025. Shortly after, the primary accused, Vijay Kumar, was arrested and sent to jail. City Superintendent of Police Vivek Jawala confirmed the arrests, verifying that the group actively lured people by promising them money, jobs, and good health to facilitate the religious conversions.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is- Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducements. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. The Hindu identity of the victims served as the central catalyst for this targeted exploitation. The perpetrators specifically sought out this Hindu family with the explicit goal of erasing their religious heritage. The underlying motivation for the targeting was driven by an animus towards the Hindu faith, as the primary objective was to permanently disenfranchise the family from their ancestral beliefs and culturally sever them from their community. The religious identity of the perpetrators was equally foundational to the crime, as they operated through a structured Christian network. By utilising the institutional cover of a religious trust and the authority of a self-appointed 'Father', the group weaponised their own faith to drive an aggressive ideological agenda. This organisational framework was actively deployed to systematically replace the victims' indigenous traditions with a contrasting, regimented religious doctrine. The perpetrators engaged in predatory proselytisation by exploiting the specific socio-economic vulnerabilities of the victims. Rather than facilitating a genuine theological exchange, the network weaponised the family's material and physical needs. Offering targeted financial benefits, employment opportunities, and medical healing functioned as a coercive mechanism, directly manipulating the family's immediate distress to secure their religious conversion. Beyond transactional inducements, the network relied on calculated manipulation and subtle indoctrination to break the family's ties to their faith. The perpetrators engaged in a systematic effort to foster disaffection towards the victims' existing Hindu beliefs while promoting their competing doctrine. This psychological grooming was designed to manufacture allegiance, bypassing free will through sustained, predatory influence. Consequently, this incident constituted a religiously motivated hate crime because the victims' religious identity formed the very heart of the offence. The organised attempt to exploit a family's vulnerability for demographic and religious engineering demonstrated clear malice towards the local Hindu community. It reflected a broader pattern of institutionalised religious targeting aimed at eradicating indigenous Hindu populations through coercive, manipulative, and highly organised tactics. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when the victim’s suffering began, not when it was reported in the media. In this case, the victim's ordeal began when the accused approached the family with inducements for conversion, but no exact starting date is mentioned in the media reports. Therefore, for documentation purposes, June 22, 2025, is recorded as the date the accused first filed the case with the police.