Hindu female doctor forced to convert to Islam by Muslim colleague at medical university in Lucknow; dismissed from her job after resisting his advances
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India 
24 October, 2026
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, a Hindu woman was targeted by a Muslim employee named Shafaat Ali Khan alias Shafqat Ali Khan. The accused harassed the victim and pressured her to convert to Islam and marry him through Nikah (Islamic marriage). When she opposed his advances and complained against him, the university administration sided with the perpetrator and dismissed the victim from her job. The perpetrator, Shafaat, 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 Hindu female doctor in the present case to light. The STF inquiry report identified the victim as Dr Jyoti Rao, a 25-year-old Hindu woman working as a computer operator in the Microbiology Department at KGMU. The accused, Shafaat Ali Khan (Shafqat Ali Khan), was a 50-year-old contractual employee in the same department. According to the report, he sexually harassed and stalked Jyoti Rao, pressuring her to convert to Islam and marry him through Nikah. She refused his demands and submitted both oral and written complaints against him to the Head of the Department. However, her complaints went unaddressed, and the university took no effective action against the accused despite her repeated attempts to seek intervention. The STF inquiry further revealed that, instead of taking action against the accused, the university terminated Jyoti Rao’s contractual employment. The report also stated that she went into depression following her termination. The findings thus exposed the institutional inaction and retaliatory treatment faced by the victim after she complained about the harassment and pressure to convert. 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 first 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 second primary category selected is: Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory selected is: Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim. In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. This case exemplifies a religiously motivated hate crime targeting a Hindu woman because of her faith. By pressuring Jyoti Rao to convert to Islam and marry him through Nikah, the Muslim perpetrator, Shafaat Ali Khan, demonstrated a disregard for her Hindu religious identity and her right to retain her faith. His conduct treated her religious beliefs as something inferior that had to be overridden rather than respected, reflecting hostility towards her freedom to practise Hinduism. 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. Pressuring someone to abandon their religion against their will violates this fundamental principle and amounts to an infringement of their religious autonomy. The perpetrator's attempts to make Jyoti Rao renounce her Hindu faith, coupled with the harassment and stalking she faced, therefore demonstrated religious animosity and constituted religiously motivated targeting of a Hindu woman. The university's response further exposed the institutional bias that compounded the victim's suffering. Her complaints regarding harassment and pressure to convert to Islam, yet her grievances were left unaddressed and no effective action was taken against the accused. Instead, the university terminated her contractual employment, making the Hindu woman who had spoken out against religiously motivated harassment bear the consequences. This response effectively punished her for resisting the perpetrator's advances and raising complaints about being targeted because of her faith. Rather than safeguarding her dignity and right to work free from religious harassment, the institution left her vulnerable and deprived her of her livelihood, causing her further personal and professional hardship. The stark contrast between the failure to act against the accused and the decision to terminate the victim's employment demonstrated the institution's religious bias and animosity towards her as a Hindu woman. It also demonstrated how her attempt to oppose religious coercion was met not with protection or redress, but with punitive action against her. 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 Hindu victim, Jyoti Rao, was therefore not an isolated target but part of a wider nexus seeking to violate 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 victim's 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.
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 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Case sub-judice
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
