Hindu female doctors forced to convert to Islam by Muslim colleague at medical university in Lucknow; accused linked to an Islamic conversion racket

Case ID : 30ab314 | Location : Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 24 October, 2026

Case ID : 30ab314

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

24 October, 2026

Hindu female doctors forced to convert to Islam by Muslim colleague at medical university in Lucknow; accused linked to an Islamic conversion racket

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

Another incident of religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus came to light at King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. In this incident, two Hindu female resident doctors were targeted by a Muslim doctor named Dr Rizwan. The accused pressured them to convert to Islam and subjected them to blackmail. When the victims raised objections and attempted to take action against him, they were threatened with damage to their medical careers and failure in their examinations. The perpetrator, Rizwan, was also part of a larger Islamic conversion network operating within the university, which aimed to target and convert Hindu medical students, doctors and other personnel to Islam. Notably, this incident came to light following an earlier case of forced religious conversion and sexual exploitation of a Hindu woman at KGMU, Lucknow, which had previously been documented by the Hinduphobia Tracker. The victim, Dr Devatri Mitra, a Hindu resident doctor at the university, was targeted by Rameezuddin Nayak (Rameez Malik). In December 2025, he lured her into a relationship under the pretext of marriage and sexually exploited her before pressuring her to convert to Islam as a condition of marrying him. When she refused to abandon her faith, he ended the relationship and subjected her to sustained harassment and intimidation, driving her to attempt suicide on 17 December 2025. Following this, Dr Devatri exposed his involvement in a wider conversion racket targeting Hindu women, students and employees within the university. A First Information Report (FIR) was registered at Chowk Police Station on 23 December 2025, prompting the Uttar Pradesh government to order an investigation by the Special Task Force (STF). The STF submitted its report on 25 October 2026, exposing a wider conversion network involving several Muslim doctors and senior faculty members and bringing the ordeal of the two Hindu female doctors in the present case to light. The STF inquiry report identified the two Hindu victims as Dr Avanjula Singh and Dr Ishita, who worked in the Radiology Department at KGMU. According to the report, Dr Rizwan pressured both women to convert to Islam and subjected them to blackmail. When they raised oral complaints with the department, their grievances were suppressed, and they were threatened with damage to their medical careers. The report documented these incidents as part of its wider findings concerning harassment, religious discrimination and coercive conversion activities targeting Hindu female students and employees at KGMU. The STF report also revealed that Dr Rizwan was part of an organised Muslim group known as "Islamic Medicos", which involved other Muslim doctors and senior professionals. The group targeted Hindu female resident doctors to promote hardline Islamic ideology among them and encourage their conversion to Islam. Notably, the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) report submitted on 25 October 2026 exposed a widespread and organised religious conversion network operating within King George's Medical University (KGMU), Lucknow, and extending to other medical institutions, including Sarojini Naidu Medical College (SNMC), Agra, and Etah Medical College. Dr Rameezuddin Nayak (Rameez Malik) was identified as one of the key figures in this network, which connected Muslim medical students, resident doctors and university personnel across institutions. Operating through interconnected groups, including one known as 'Islamic Medicos', the network systematically targeted Hindu women doctors, students and employees through relationships, sexual exploitation, blackmail and pressure to convert to Islam. The investigation also exposed the involvement of several medical personnel and university staff members who facilitated these activities, protected those involved and enabled the network to operate across departments and institutions. The STF report further documented systematic religious discrimination against Hindu doctors, students and employees within KGMU. Hindu residents faced discriminatory treatment, harassment, adverse professional assessments and unequal treatment on account of their religious identity, while Muslim students and employees received preferential treatment. The report also exposed how influential faculty members and university personnel shielded those involved, discouraged complaints and created an institutional environment in which Hindu women who resisted religious coercion or sought action faced intimidation and professional repercussions. The investigation additionally brought to light the systematic propagation of hardline Islamic ideology and religious radicalisation among Muslim medical students. It specifically highlighted the promotion of the ideology of Islamic extremist preacher Zakir Naik, who was banned in India and whose organisation, the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), was declared an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The report documented organised religious gatherings, the use of university facilities for religious activities and visits by Islamic preachers from outside Lucknow. These activities demonstrated that the network extended beyond individual conversion attempts and involved organised efforts to promote hardline religious ideology within medical institutions. Significantly, the STF report also established Rameezuddin's association with Dr Shaheen Saeed, who was apprehended in connection with the 2025 Delhi Red Fort blast case. He had met her at a medical conference and was influenced by her radical Islamic ideology. During interrogation, he acknowledged his association with her. Electronic devices recovered from him contained contacts of several Hindu women he had approached and pressured to embrace Islam, along with photographs of around 50 women. The report further exposed the financial incentives attached to the conversion operation: ₹15 lakh was offered for converting Hindu medical professionals and doctors, while ₹5 lakh was offered for converting other Hindu individuals. Taken together, the findings exposed an organised network involving the targeting of Hindu women across medical institutions, religious discrimination, ideological radicalisation, institutional support and financial incentives for religious conversion.

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. This case was a clear example of a religiously driven hate crime, as two Hindu female resident doctors were pressured by a Muslim doctor, Dr Rizwan, to convert to Islam. The use of coercion and blackmail to compel the victims to abandon their faith directly violated their freedom of religion and personal autonomy. Religious conversion can be considered genuine and voluntary only when it stems from an individual's own choice, conviction and interest in embracing a particular faith. In this case, however, the victims were not given the freedom to make that choice. Instead, the perpetrator sought to override their religious beliefs and compel them to adopt Islam through intimidation. This demonstrated a disregard for their right to retain their Hindu identity and reflected hostility towards their faith. Attempting to make Hindu women renounce their religion against their will was not merely an infringement of their personal autonomy but also a direct attack on their religious freedom. The institutional response further compounded the victims' ordeal and exposed their vulnerability within the workplace. When they raised oral complaints against the perpetrator with their department, their grievances were suppressed rather than investigated or addressed. They were instead threatened with damage to their medical careers and failure in their examinations, effectively using their professional future as leverage to silence them. The department's response not only denied the victims an opportunity to seek redress but also placed additional pressure on them for speaking out against the religious coercion they had faced. An institution responsible for ensuring the safety and professional welfare of its staff failed to protect its Hindu employees and instead subjected them to intimidation. This demonstrated how the victims' attempt to resist religiously motivated harassment was met with institutional suppression, further undermining their religious autonomy and their right to work without religious discrimination and harassment. Furthermore, the perpetrator's association with an organised conversion network demonstrated that the targeting of Hindu women was not an isolated occurrence but part of a wider, coordinated effort. The network, which involved other Muslim doctors and professionals, engaged with Hindu female resident doctors and promoted hardline Islamic ideology among them. Its activities pointed to a premeditated pattern of targeting Hindu women and pressuring them to abandon their faith and embrace Islam through relationships, sexual exploitation, manipulation and intimidation. This organised approach exposed a wider conversion agenda in which Hindu women were targeted on account of their religious identity, with no regard for their freedom to retain their faith. The systematic use of coercion to undermine Hindu religious identity reflected deep-seated hostility towards Hinduism and demonstrated how Islamic radicalism manifests through organised efforts to influence and compel religious conversion. The two victims were therefore not isolated targets but part of a wider nexus seeking to undermine the religious autonomy of Hindu women, making this a clear instance of organised, religiously motivated hostility towards Hindus. The ideological associations uncovered during the investigation further exposed the anti-Hindu orientation of the network. The Special Task Force report referred to the propagation of the ideology of Islamic extremist preacher Zakir Naik, whose organisation, the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), was declared an unlawful association by the Government of India under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, on grounds that included promoting religious hatred, encouraging forcible conversions to Islam and making derogatory statements against Hindus and Hindu deities. The investigation also brought to light the conversion racket's association with Dr Shaheen Saeed, who was one of the perpetrators of the November 2025 Red Fort bombing in Delhi. These ideological influences and associations, considered alongside the network’s organised efforts to target Hindu women and coerce their conversion, revealed a deeply hostile attitude towards Hinduism and demonstrated that the perpetrators’ conduct was rooted in more than personal exploitation: it was accompanied by an ideological drive to undermine Hindu religious identity and impose Islam through coercion, making this an example of a religiously driven offence. Overall, since this incident met several parameters of a hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred, rather than when it was reported in the media. However, in this case, media reports did not specify the exact date on which the victims' ordeal began. The only available date was that of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) report, published on 25 October 2026. Therefore, this date has been selected as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes only.