Hindu businessman faces fresh conversion threats from Muslim man tied to son’s disappearance after son reverted to Hinduism

Case ID : 30aaa0a | Location : Shamli, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 17 September, 2026

Case ID : 30aaa0a

Shamli, Uttar Pradesh, India

17 September, 2026

Hindu businessman faces fresh conversion threats from Muslim man tied to son’s disappearance after son reverted to Hinduism

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Shamli, Uttar Pradesh, Hindu pharmaceutical businessman Devraj Malik, father of Ayush Malik, received fresh conversion and death threats on 18 September 2026. In a complaint submitted to the Shamli police, Devraj Malik said that a Muslim man named Qari Sultan, a resident of Joheta Naseeb under Sarsawa Police Station in Saharanpur, had been pressuring him and his family to convert to Islam. The accused also threatened to kill him and his family if he failed to transfer his property to Qari and Mufti Abdullah of Darul Uloom Deoband. Devraj Malik stated that the fresh threats had come after his son Ayush Malik, who had reverted to Hinduism after following discussions with his family, went missing again. He accused Qari Sultan and Mufti Abdullah of taking him away. Ayush Malik is the same man who was lured into a relationship by a female Muslim gym trainer, Chandni Qureshi and subjected to sustained religious indoctrination over several years. Hinduphobia Tracker documented the incident, highlighting how Ayush Malik had fallen prey to this Pakistan-linked conversion network that included three clerics who were involved in the religious indoctrination and conversion. On September 18, 2026, Devraj Malik said Sultan Qari approached the Allahabad High Court with a petition seeking Ayush's freedom to live independently. According to the complaint, both Ayush and his father appeared before the court on September 16. After the court granted Ayush the freedom to live as he wished, Devraj said that Sultan Qari took Ayush to an undisclosed location. He also said that Sultan Qari visited Devraj on September 18 and threatened him by saying that Ayush had been converted to Islam again. The accused then pressured Devraj and his family to convert to Islam and threatened to kill Devraj, his wife and his son if they refused. Ayush remained unaccounted for thereafter. His absence also affected the operation of his medicine shop and caused financial losses to the family, Devraj said. Devraj further stated that the accused threatened to seize his property unless he transferred it to Qari Sultan and Mufti Abdullah of Darul Uloom Deoband. Devraj also named Mufti Abdullah as being involved in the matter. Superintendent of Police Narendra Pratap Singh confirmed that the police had received the complaint from Devraj Malik. He said the matter was included in the FIR previously filed by the victim. It may be recalled that Ayush Malik's case first came to public attention after Swami Yashveer Maharaj, a Hindu leader, released a video stating that Ayush Malik had been targeted and converted through a deliberate conspiracy. The father had then come on video and confirmed that his 27-year-old son, Ayush Malik, came into contact with Chandni Qureshi, a Muslim woman working as a trainer at Qureshi Plus Gym, around five years earlier, in 2021. Ayush, who held a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree and operated Bharat Medical Store, was targeted and lured into a relationship by Chandni. His name and appearance were changed during the process of his conversion and religious indoctrination. Ayush grew a beard and regularly wore a Muslim-style white cap and traditional Islamic attire. The family has then said that Ayush was coerced into adopting Islamic religious practices, including offering prayers at a mosque. Photographs that later surfaced publicly showed him offering prayers at a mosque and sitting at his medical store dressed in traditional Islamic attire. Devraj Malik also confirmed that Chandni and her family arranged a Nikahnama (Islamic marriage contract) and later used it to exert control over his son, Ayush Malik. He stated that the nikah (Islamic marriage) was performed secretly without their knowledge around four years ago (2022). Following this, on 29 June 2026, reports emerged that Ayush Malik had returned to Hinduism through a Ghar Wapsi ceremony. A video that surfaced after his return showed Ayush performing Hindu rituals and offering prayers. In the video, Ayush stated that although he had converted to Islam, he had decided of his own free will to return to Sanatan Dharma and live with his family. He said that he had embraced Islam and changed his religion but had returned to Hinduism after seeing his family's pain and keeping his family in mind, and wanted to live under their care and protection.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category relevant in this case is Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the selected subcategory 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 in discriminatory grounds, which have the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his rights 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. 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. This case was included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because the conduct revealed a sustained attempt to dismantle the religious identity of a Hindu family and compel its members to abandon Hinduism. The conversion effort did not end with the targeting of Ayush Malik. When he returned to Hinduism, the pressure continued and expanded to his parents, demonstrating that the objective was not merely to influence one individual’s personal choices but to secure the family’s submission to conversion to Islam. The most significant aspect of the case was the persistence of the conversion campaign despite Ayush’s return to Sanatan Dharma. His re-embrace of Hinduism did not resolve the matter because his continued Hindu identity was itself treated as unacceptable. The subsequent pressure on his parents showed that when the effort directed at one Hindu individual did not achieve the desired religious outcome, the perpetrators extended the pressure to the wider family. This revealed a pattern in which resistance to conversion was met not with acceptance, but with intensified efforts to break that resistance. The repeated threats were therefore not incidental to the conduct. They functioned as instruments to wear down the family’s ability to resist and ultimately compel surrender. By placing the family’s lives and property under threat, the perpetrators sought to make continued adherence to Hinduism increasingly untenable. The demand was not simply that the family comply with a particular instruction; it was that they abandon their Hindu identity under the weight of threats to their safety, livelihood and property. The pressure over property further intensified this religious coercion. The demand that the victim transfer his property to the accused and Mufti Abdullah, coupled with threats of seizure, placed the family under simultaneous religious and material pressure. Their Hindu identity was therefore targeted through multiple forms of coercion, with conversion presented alongside the threat of losing their property and facing physical harm. This transformed the effort from an attempt to change religious affiliation into a sustained campaign to break the family’s resistance. The sequence also demonstrated an attempt to disrupt the religious continuity of the family itself. Ayush’s return to Hinduism represented the preservation of that identity after an earlier conversion. Instead of accepting this return, the pressure was redirected towards his parents and the household. The objective therefore extended beyond changing an individual's faith. It sought to prevent the family from continuing as a Hindu household and to compel its members to surrender the religious identity they had retained. This systematic attempt to dismantle the religious foundations of Hindu individuals and redirect them towards conversion to Islam reflected clear religious animus against Hindu identity. The insistence on making Hindu individuals abandon their faith, particularly after they had resisted conversion and reaffirmed their Hindu identity, demonstrated that their continued adherence to Hinduism itself was being treated as something that had to be overcome. This insistence on changing the religious identity of the Hindu victims stemmed from hostility towards their Hindu religion and reflected an attitude in which Islam was treated as the faith to which Hindus ought to submit, while their existing Hindu faith was afforded no regard or respect. The coercive effort to make Hindus abandon their own religion and adopt Islam therefore went beyond religious persuasion. It treated Hindu religious identity as something to be erased and replaced, demonstrating clear religious animus against the victims because of their Hindu faith. The incident therefore met the threshold of a hate crime. Accordingly, this case was added to the Hinduphobia Tracker hate crime database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred, not when it was reported or published. The victim was threatened on 18 September 2026; therefore, this date has been used as an indicative incident date for documentation purposes. Disclaimer: Though Devraj Malik said that his family was being threatened to convert, there is no information on who all in his family were being targeted. As such, the victim count has been kept as one.