Hindu girl lured away, forcibly converted to Islam and pressured to consume cow meat by Muslim man in West Bengal

Case ID : 30aac2c | Location : Diamond Harbour, West Bengal, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 6 September, 2025

Case ID : 30aac2c

Diamond Harbour, West Bengal, India

6 September, 2025

Hindu girl lured away, forcibly converted to Islam and pressured to consume cow meat by Muslim man in West Bengal

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to do Nikah

Forced to eat beef

Case Summary

In the Diamond Harbour subdivision of West Bengal, a Hindu girl named Suchetana Roy was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man named Roushan Sheikh. He subsequently lured her away from her home, forcibly converted her to Islam, made her consume cow meat and made her undergo a nikah (Islamic marriage) with him. The accused also admitted to the crime on camera, stating that he had deliberately trapped the girl in what he described as “love jihad” and married her. Notably, ‘Love jihad’ or ‘Grooming jihad’ is a commonly used term in public discourse to refer to crimes in which Hindu women and minor Hindu girls are targeted on the basis of their religious identity and lured into relationships or marriages for the purpose of religious conversion or sexual exploitation by Muslim men. In several documented cases, Muslim men conceal their religious identity and present themselves as Hindus by adopting Hindu names, wearing Hindu symbols and using forged documents reflecting a fabricated Hindu identity. These crimes are driven by hostility towards the Hindu community, with Hindu women and minor girls being specifically targeted for sexual and religious exploitation. The incident came to light after Suchetana was traced and rescued several months after she had gone missing, following the intervention of Hindu activists associated with the Hindu Vahini Sena. Following her rescue, Devdatta Dev Majhi, head of the Hindu Vahini Sena and a prominent Hindu activist, narrated the details of the incident in a post on X. He also shared a video in which the perpetrator identified himself as Roushan Sheikh and admitted to the crime on camera. In the recorded statement, Sheikh acknowledged trapping and marrying the Hindu girl and stated that he would not again take or marry a Hindu girl in such a manner. The video was shared in connection with Suchetana’s recovery and the circumstances surrounding the incident. According to Devdatta Dev Majhi, the victim belonged to a middle-class Hindu family and had studied at an English-medium school, where she was a good student. After she was lured away by Sheikh in September 2025, her parents approached several individuals and organisations in an attempt to locate her. However, the family remained unable to trace their daughter for several months. Majhi stated that they eventually approached a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of the Legislative Assembly, whose reference brought them into contact with him and the Hindu Vahini Sena. Majhi explained that after the family approached the organisation, its members began efforts to trace the girl and managed to rescue her within approximately a month. He stated that the organisation learnt after recovering her that Sheikh had forcibly converted her to Islam, made her undergo a nikah, made her consume cow meat and kept her in poor conditions. Following her rescue, members of the Hindu Vahini Sena arranged medical treatment and other assistance for her. Majhi added that Suchetana was safe after being rescued. Majhi also highlighted the contrast between the educational backgrounds of the victim and the perpetrator. He described Suchetana as a capable student who had attended an English-medium school, while characterising Sheikh as an uneducated man who had received little formal schooling. The Hindu activist also urged Hindu parents to make their daughters aware of such religiously motivated crimes so that they could recognise potential threats, protect themselves from predatory targeting and help prevent similar tragedies.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected for this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected for this case is: Forced conversion before marriage. The tertiary categories selected for this case are: Forced to do nikah, Forced to eat beef. 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, 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 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. This case was a clear example of a religiously motivated hate crime, as a Hindu girl was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man, taken away from her home, forcibly converted to Islam, made to undergo a nikah and forced to consume cow meat. The sequence of events demonstrated that her Hindu religious identity was central to the abuse she endured and that her faith was subjected to deliberate coercion and violation. Although the perpetrator had not concealed his religious identity, the nature of the relationship demonstrated that the victim was initially made to believe that their different religious backgrounds would not be a boundary or limitation to their romantic involvement. Using this understanding, he lured her into a relationship that subsequently became a means of facilitating her religious conversion. The fact that the relationship was pursued despite their religious differences, only for the victim to later be subjected to forced conversion, demonstrated the religiously driven targeting at play. Rather than being based on genuine love, mutual trust or respect for her religious autonomy, the relationship was used to bring her into circumstances in which her religious identity could be forcibly changed. The exploitation of her trust and emotional involvement to facilitate this coercion underscored the predatory nature of the relationship and the hostility directed towards her Hindu identity. The perpetrator subsequently lured the victim away from her home and forcibly converted her to Islam, violating her religious autonomy and dignity. Religious conversion is a deeply personal matter that must rest on an individual's free will and informed consent. By compelling her to abandon her Hindu religious identity and adopt Islam, he denied her the freedom to determine and practise her own faith, undermining her fundamental rights to freedom of conscience and religion. In the context of the preceding relationship and the subsequent marriage, the forced conversion demonstrated an attempt to displace her existing religious identity and impose a different one upon her. This disregard for her right to retain her Hindu faith, coupled with the coercive circumstances in which the conversion took place, established the religious dimension of the abuse and reinforced the classification of the incident as a hate crime. The victim's forced conversion followed by a nikah further demonstrated how the perpetrator sought to formalise the relationship through marriage after imposing a new religious identity upon her. Under traditional Islamic marriage requirements, a Muslim man cannot ordinarily contract a nikah with a Hindu woman who remains Hindu; conversion to Islam is required for such a marriage to be recognised as valid under Islamic law. In this context, the sequence of forced conversion followed by nikah demonstrated how the imposition of a new religious identity was linked to the institutionalisation of the relationship through marriage. Instead of respecting the victim's existing faith and allowing her to make independent decisions about her religious beliefs and marital future, the perpetrator subjected her to conversion before making her undergo a nikah. Marriage in such circumstances serves to consolidate his control over the victim by placing the relationship within a formal marital framework, potentially making it more difficult for her to resist further coercion or regain her autonomy. The sequence of events therefore illustrated how the perpetrator's actions sought to subordinate her religious autonomy to his demands, further establishing the coercive and religiously hostile nature of the incident. The perpetrator's act of forcing the victim to consume cow meat provided further evidence of the violation of her religious beliefs. The cow holds a deeply revered position in Hinduism and is regarded as sacred within Hindu religious and cultural traditions. It is associated with nourishment, motherhood, abundance and religious merit, while the cow and its products, including milk, curd, ghee, dung and urine, have traditionally held significance in Hindu ritual practices, including Vedic rites and purification ceremonies. The cow is also revered as 'gomātā*', or the mother cow, reflecting the respect accorded to the animal within the Hindu tradition. Consequently, cow slaughter and the consumption of cow meat are regarded by Hindus as serious religious transgressions that violate deeply held beliefs. Forcing the victim to consume cow meat was therefore not merely an act of coercion involving food; it compelled her to participate in an act that directly conflicted with her religious convictions and observances. In the context of her forced conversion and nikah, this act demonstrated a disregard for her Hindu faith and further illustrated the attempt to sever her from her religious identity through coercion. By imposing a practice considered religiously prohibited by Hindus, the perpetrator violated her right to uphold her beliefs and subjected her to an act that carried profound religious significance. This deliberate violation, considered alongside the other forms of coercion she endured, reinforced the classification of the incident as a religiously motivated hate crime. The use of forced consumption of cow meat to violate Hindu religious convictions has also featured in historical accounts of religious persecution and forced conversion in the Indian subcontinent. Accounts concerning medieval Muslim invaders and periods of religious persecution have described instances in which Hindus were forced to consume cow meat to humiliate them, violate their religious observances and pressure them to abandon their faith. Such practices illustrate how the deliberate violation of religious dietary prohibitions has been used as a means of attacking Hindu religious identity. In the present case, the forced consumption of cow meat, alongside the victim's conversion to Islam and subsequent nikah, formed part of a broader pattern of coercion that disregarded her religious autonomy and sought to override her Hindu identity. This further supported the classification of the incident as a religiously motivated hate crime. The fact that the perpetrator himself admitted to his crime on camera further underscored the religious hostility underlying the incident. His admission to deliberately trapping the Hindu girl in a relationship and subsequently marrying her, in the context of her forced conversion to Islam, demonstrated a blatant disregard for her religious identity and autonomy. His conduct reflected deep-seated hostility towards the victim’s Hindu identity, which was subjected to coercion and violation. The circumstances surrounding his admission further reinforced the religiously motivated nature of the crime. This made the incident a clear example of a hate crime targeting a Hindu woman on the basis of her religious identity. Overall, since this case meets the parameters of a religiously driven crime, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident date based on when the victim's ordeal begins rather than when it is reported in the media. In this case, media reports did not specify the exact date on which the victim’s ordeal began, stating only that it started in 2025. The incident came to light when Devdutta Dev Majhi posted about it on social media on 7 October 2026. Based on the available information, 7 October 2025 has been selected as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes only.