Minor Hindu girl pressured to convert to Islam before nikah by Muslim man; family threatened with death over opposition to conversion
Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand, India 
6 October, 2023
Case Summary
In Sitarganj, Udham Singh Nagar district, Uttarakhand, a minor Hindu girl was pressured to convert to Islam before nikah by a Muslim man, Aris. He also threatened to kill her if she did not agree to the conversion and marriage, and threatened to run over her father with a truck when the family opposed the proposed conversion and marriage. In 2023, Aris established contact and friendship with the minor girl by deceiving her. He subsequently took her outside several times by persuading or luring her to accompany him. During these occasions, he captured objectionable photographs and videos of her. Aris then threatened to circulate them on social media and use them to defame the girl. He also followed and harassed her sister. The girl's mother said his conduct had frightened her daughter, who had reduced her outings and stopped going to the sewing centre for fear. The family remained in an atmosphere of fear, while the threats to defame the girl caused her mental and social distress. The girl's mother approached Kotwali Sitarganj and, on 7 August 2026, lodged a First Information Report against Aris. In the initial case, police had registered offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and other relevant provisions. Deputy Superintendent of Police D. R. Verma, the in-charge Circle Officer, said police would examine the minor's statement and evidence related to the events before taking further action. Despite police action, Aris was later granted bail. After Aris had come out on bail, he continued to follow and harass the girl. He again threatened to circulate her photographs and videos and continued troubling the family. The mother had stated that her daughter had become increasingly frightened and had stopped going to the sewing centre. She also sought protection for both daughters and strict action against Aris and his associates. The mother subsequently submitted another complaint to the police concerning the renewed harassment. Based on her complaint, police registered another First Information Report against Aris. Police said that the earlier case was also registered against him and that he obtained bail after action was taken in that matter. In the subsequent case, police began examining the details and had been looking for Aris for necessary action.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category selected in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The 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 other subcategory selected is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories selected are: Family claims grooming, 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 primary category selected is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is: 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, 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 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 pressurizing 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 a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The other subcategory selected is: Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary categories selected are: Family claims grooming, Rape and sexual assault/harassment, 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. This case was classified by the Hinduphobia Tracker as a religiously motivated hate crime because a minor Hindu girl was groomed, harassed, and pressured to convert to Islam for nikah by a Muslim man. He threatened her and her family when they opposed the conversion. The sequence of events indicates that her religious identity was a central aspect of the targeting. She was not merely subjected to harassment and threats. The pressure to change her religion and marry the accused made the religious dimension of the offence explicit. The most direct religious dimension had arisen from the pressure on the minor Hindu girl to change her religion to Islam after attaining adulthood so that she could marry the accused. Her Hindu religious identity had therefore been placed at the centre of the proposed relationship. The intended change required her to abandon her existing Hindu identity and adopt Islam, making the pressure specifically directed at her religious affiliation rather than being limited to an ordinary relationship dispute. More significantly, the proposed marriage had been expressly connected with religious conversion. The circumstances had presented conversion to Islam as a condition associated with the intended marriage, meaning that the girl's Hindu identity had stood in direct conflict with what was being demanded of her for the proposed union. This had represented pressure upon a Hindu minor to relinquish her faith as part of entering the proposed marriage. Beyond the religious pressure itself, the girl had also been threatened with the circulation of her photographs and videos on social media. This had introduced an additional coercive element, as the threatened dissemination of intimate or compromising material had exposed her to humiliation, reputational damage and social pressure. Most notably, the family's opposition to the proposed conversion and marriage had been followed by threats against the girl and her father. The threats had included killing the girl and running over her father with a truck. These threats had acquired a clear religious context because they had been reported in connection with the family's resistance to the proposed conversion of their Hindu daughter and her intended marriage. The conduct had therefore extended beyond pressure concerning a relationship and had involved threats against a Hindu family after it resisted the proposed change in the girl's religious identity. The fact that after being granted bail in the earlier case, Aris had continued to follow and harass the minor Hindu girl had reinforced the religious dimension of the earlier conduct. The renewed harassment had occurred after the family had resisted the proposed conversion to Islam and marriage, while the girl continued to face pressure connected to her Hindu religious identity. His subsequent conduct had therefore prolonged the pressure directed at a Hindu girl rather than ending with the initial police action, with the threats involving her photographs and videos further maintaining the coercive circumstances surrounding her. It is further 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. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. Disclaimer: The media reported this incident on October 7, 2026. The exact date on which the accused first came into contact with the Hindu victim was not specified in the available sources. However, the report states that the victim came into contact with the perpetrator about three years before the article was published. Since no exact date was mentioned, only the approximate month and year of the beginning of the victim’s ordeal could be derived. Because the Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when the victim’s ordeal began, we determined an indicative incident date by aligning this three-year timeline with the publication date. Accordingly, we selected 7th October 2023 for documentation purposes.
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
Perpatrator released by Police
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
