Tribal Hindu girl pressured for religious conversion and marriage, harassed with threats and caste based abuses by Muslim man
Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India 
17 September, 2025
Case Summary
In Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, a tribal Hindu girl was stalked, harassed and pressured for religious conversion and marriage by a Muslim man named Sameer Khan. According to reports, the victim came into contact with the accused, a resident of Jalkuan village, when she visited her maternal uncle. After this, she came back to her hostel. However, the accused began stalking her and harassing her, pressuring her to convert to Islam. On one occasion, he intercepted her in the Anandnagar area, blocked her path with his motorbike, and told her, "I like you, so change your religion and join mine. I will marry you. If you don't listen to me, I will kill you one day." When she rejected his proposal, he threatened to kill her and hurled caste-based abuses. After enduring harassment for over a month, the victim lodged a complaint with the police. A case was registered under the Madhya Pradesh Religious Freedom Act and other sections, and the accused was arrested.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The case has been added to the tracker under the prime category- Predatory proselytisation. Under this, the sub-category 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. The second primary category selected here is - Hate speech against Hindus. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem out of inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith, therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. This case has been added to the tracker because the Hindu girl was repeatedly harassed and pressured for religious conversion and marriage by the Muslim accused. Pressuring a Hindu individual to abandon her faith and accept another religion constitutes a direct assault on her religious identity and dignity. It is not a matter of personal choice; it is coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim’s Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity, as the act is not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Furthermore, when the victim refused his proposal, the accused gave her death threats. This sustained pattern of coercion and death threats underscores that the crime was not a random or isolated incident but a deliberate effort to impose religious conversion through intimidation and threats. The intention was to break the victim down emotionally, physically, and spiritually to make her comply. This was not random; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. Such actions violated the victim’s fundamental rights, including her religious freedom and autonomy to choose her faith. Additionally, she was subjected to caste-specific abuses as well. It can be argued that a caste-specific slur is aimed at the micro-identity of belonging to the Dalit section of the Hindu community and not the Hindu identity itself. However, as far as Abrahamic religions are concerned, the micro-identities of caste, region, and language are secondary. It is the religious identity that drives the animosity of the perpetrator against the Hindu victim. In this case, the accused hurled caste abuses at the victim because of his animosity towards Hinduism and Hindus. The fact that caste slurs were hurled at the victim further proves the communal nature of the whole crime. These actions stemmed from inherent hostility towards the victim’s professed faith, since Abrahamic faiths hold that any non-adherent to their faith is subject to conversion, no matter the means used to achieve it. Such acts were not merely personal crimes; they were rooted in a desire to dominate and erase the religious identity of the victim. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, though it is mentioned that he was harassing her for over a month. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date — 18 September 2025 — as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 18 October 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 1
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 1
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
