Dalit Hindu woman abducted, forced to convert to Islam and consume objectionable items by Muslim man in Bihar
Araria, Bihar, India 
25 November, 2025
Case Summary
In Araria, Bihar, a Dalit Hindu woman was abducted and taken across multiple locations by a Muslim man named Mohammad Alam Azad. The accused subjected her to coercion, confinement, and threats. He also forced her to convert to Islam and consume objectionable items. The woman, a resident of the Forbesganj area in Araria district, Bihar, stated that the accused approached her by falsely claiming that her husband had called for her. He then forced her into his car and transported her to Bihampur in Birpur, Supaul district, where she was held captive for several days before being brought back to Araria. During this period, he compelled her to sign papers that were later notarised without her consent. According to her statement, she was then taken to Palasi, where she was kept confined. The accused’s family members pressured her by forcing her to eat objectionable items and attempting to compel her to undergo religious conversion. She further stated that the accused, Alam, took her from Saharsa by train to Delhi, where she was again kept captive and threatened. The accused threatened to kill her child in order to maintain control over her. Her husband confirmed that he had filed written complaints at the Forbesganj police station and the SC ST police station regarding the abduction, confinement, and threats. However, he stated that no action had been taken by the authorities.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category selected in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, 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 has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker because the sequence of actions described by the victim points to a pattern of coercion that directly targeted her Hindu identity and attempted to remove her agency through religious pressure. The accused abducted her, transported her across districts, confined her in multiple locations, and used threats to restrict her movement. These behaviours alone indicate severe criminal intent, but what places the case within the tracker’s scope is the pressure to abandon her religion and adopt that of the perpetrator. Such conduct is central to predatory proselytisation, where conversion is pursued through intimidation, deception, and psychological force. The woman’s statement highlights repeated attempts to compel her to change her religion. She described being forced to consume objectionable items linked to religious pressure, a tactic that has appeared in several documented cases where perpetrators sought to break the victim’s confidence in her own faith. This form of coercion is not incidental. It uses fear, humiliation, and isolation to weaken the victim’s ability to resist religious conversion. Her confinement in Palasi, followed by further captivity in Delhi, strengthens the view that the accused maintained control over her with a planned motive that went beyond personal misconduct. The threats made against her child further reveal an attempt to dominate every aspect of her decision-making. In contexts involving Hindu victims, threats to family members have historically been used to force compliance in matters of conversion. The victim’s account closely follows this documented pattern, where personal security and religious identity are attacked simultaneously. The behaviour described by the victim aligns with the tracker’s category of harassment, threats, and coercion for conversion. This category is reserved for cases where sustained intimidation aims to dismantle the victim’s religious autonomy. The nature of the threats, the forced confinement, the attempts to make her sign documents, and the religious pressure together demonstrate an underlying hostility towards her Hindu identity. Conversion that is not based on the individual's willing desire but rather employs harassment, coercion, or threats as tools constitutes a clear instance of a hate crime rooted in religious animosity. Such acts are intended to forcibly strip the victim of her Hindu faith, making this a definitive example of a religiously motivated crime. Given that this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it is being 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 media reporting dates. However, in this case, media reports did not specify the exact occurrence date. Therefore, for documentation purposes, 26 November 2025—the media reporting date—serves as the indicative incident date.
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 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
