Ghaziabad: Hindu couple harassed by family members to convert to Christianity

Case ID : 43c14c9 | Location : Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 22 September, 2024

Case ID : 43c14c9

Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

22 September, 2024

Ghaziabad: Hindu couple harassed by family members to convert to Christianity

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu couple was pressured to convert to Christianity. The couple, Sangeeta and her husband Ajit stated that their in-laws were behind the threats and violence. Sangeeta alleged that her brother-in-law's family, who had already converted to Christianity, had pushed her and Ajit to follow suit. The couple refused, which led to repeated beatings and death threats. According to Sangeeta, her brother-in-law Titu had converted to Christianity along with his wife and children, living in Noida. After his death, the pressure on Sangeeta and her family intensified. Titu’s son, Ashu, frequently visited their home in Ghaziabad, often accompanied by Christian priests. Ashu, along with his grandparents, Kishanpal and Asharfi, also assaulted Sangeeta and Ajit when they refused to convert. The couple's children were also living in fear due to the ongoing violence. Fearing for their lives, Sangeeta filed a police complaint, demanding strict action against her in-laws. The police registered a case under sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita and the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the hate tracker under the prime category- Predatory proselytisation and under this, the sub-category chosen is- Harassment, threat, coercion from 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. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. 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 exemplifies a hate crime involving predatory proselytization, where harassment, threats, and coercion were used to pressure the Hindu couple, Sangeeta and Ajit, into converting to Christianity. The relentless attempts by their in-laws to forcefully alter their religious beliefs reflect a clear violation of their personal autonomy and religious freedom. The couple’s refusal to convert was met with physical violence, death threats, and a persistent atmosphere of fear and intimidation, making it evident that the intent was to impose Christianity, an alien faith, upon the victims, through forceful means. Such acts of coercion constitute a form of hate crime, as they aim to strip individuals of their religious identity through manipulative and aggressive tactics. Since the motivating factor of the crime was the religious identity of the victims and the intention of the accused to disenfranchise him from it, the case has been categorised as a hate crime.