Dalit Hindu woman raped and blackmailed for conversion by Muslim man posing as Hindu; minor daughter sexually exploited

Case ID : 45f503d | Location : Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 8 December, 2025

Case ID : 45f503d

Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India

8 December, 2025

Dalit Hindu woman raped and blackmailed for conversion by Muslim man posing as Hindu; minor daughter sexually exploited

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Forced conversion before marriage

Blackmailed to convert

Case Summary

In Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, a 30-year-old Dalit Hindu woman was deceived, raped and blackmailed for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Salman, who pretended to be a Hindu. The accused extorted money from the victim and also sexually exploited her minor daughter. According to reports, the victim used to travel by bus daily, during which she came into contact with the accused, Salman, who was the bus agent. The accused, a resident of Singot village in Khandwa, befriended the victim by introducing himself as a Hindu man named Sanjay. The accused gradually gained her trust, obtained her contact details, and they began communicating with each other. The accused later retrieved the victim's photographs from her social media, obscenely edited them, and began harassing her by threatening to make them viral. The accused blackmailed her for over three years, using her images as a tool of extortion and sexual exploitation. She was forced to pay him repeatedly, with her husband taking loans amounting to around 2.5 lakh rupees, yet the accused continued to blackmail her. Salman raped her multiple times and also pressured her to convert to Islam under the false promise of marriage. At one point, Salman called his brother-in-law, Shahrukh, who also raped her under the same threat of circulating her photos publicly. Salman frequently entered her home when her husband was away and even sexually assaulted her minor daughter, pushing the victim into a state of constant fear. Subsequently, fed up with the ordeal, the victim filed a complaint with the police. The Padmanagar police registered a case under sections related to rape, blackmail, intimidation, the Madhya Pradesh Religious Freedom Act 2021, and the SC/ST (Atrocities) Act, considering the victim’s Dalit background. Salman was immediately arrested, and CSP Abhinav Barange confirmed that interrogation was underway.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the category- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the subcategory selected is- Man pretends to be Hindu, and the tertiary category selected is- Name changed. When a non-Hindu man pretends to be a Hindu to deceive a Hindu woman into a relationship, the act is seen as triggered by malafide intentions. In some cases, the woman eventually accepts the man’s original religious identity and converts after the man’s identity is revealed. These cases could be argued as cases of religious brainwashing and a result of the pressure a woman feels after getting into a relationship with a man. The woman, it can be argued, also changed her religious identity because of the stigma she believes she might face if she chooses to walk out of a deceptive relationship. However, for the purpose of documenting hate crimes, the cases in this subcategory are limited to those where there is explicit violence aimed at religious conversion against the wishes of the victim (force-feeding beef, blackmailing with intimate videos, rape on refusal to convert, etc), or if the woman herself complains of the man’s religious deception. In such cases, it is established that the deception of the non-Hindu man had a specific aim of religious conversion or targeting of the victim due to her Hindu religious identity, therefore, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. The other sub-category selected is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - Rape and sexual assault/harassment. In our database, we have not added incidents where women have converted to another religion of their free will and no allegations of forced/involuntary conversion have been made. However, there are certain cases of conversion where the consent itself is a result of the brainwashing or grooming of a minor by the non-Hindu perpetrator trying to victimise a woman for her Hindu religious identity. The phenomenon of grooming points to non-Hindu perpetrators identifying their Hindu victims’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them over months and sometimes years, to extract the supposed ‘consent’ in order to convert their religion. In most cases of grooming, the victims are minors or the grooming started when the victim was a minor. In other cases of grooming, the non-Hindu perpetrator brainwashes and grooms a minor victim to extract their trust and then proceeds to rape them repeatedly with the intent of converting them to their faith. It is pertinent to understand here that when the victim is a minor, the ‘consent’ to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult itself is redundant – addressed by POCSO. While every case of conversion of a minor and incidents of establishing a physical relationship with a minor by an adult is a crime, for the purpose of this database, a case would be considered a hate crime only if there is a distinct religious angle to the grooming. For example, in the UK, if a Hindu minor is targeted by Pakistani grooming gangs, it would be considered a hate crime because the victims are specifically targeted owing to their non-Muslim religious identity with the perpetrators being Muslim. In other cases, if a Hindu minor is brainwashed into entering a physical relationship with the non-Hindu adult perpetrator and the family alleges grooming/brainwashing of the minor to convert her religion, it would form a part of this database. If the victim is a Hindu adult, the case would form a part of this database only if the victim herself says that she was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. However, if the victim is deceased (murdered or otherwise), the case would form a part of this database if her family/friends provided testimony that the victim was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. Since these crimes have a distinct religious angle where the victim is being targeted owing to her Hindu religious identity, these cases are considered a hate crime. The other sub-category selected is - Forced conversion before marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. In such cases, typically, two patterns emerge. First, when the relationship is consensual, and the religious identity of the perpetrator is known to the Hindu woman in the relationship, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. The second is when the woman gets into a marriage with the man pretending to share her faith. Later, when the truth is revealed, the man starts pressuring the woman to convert her religion and give up her religious identity. In both the situations, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurizing the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. The other sub-category selected is - Blackmailed to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is blackmailed to convert her religion, owing to her religious identity of being a Hindu. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim; however, there could be cases where the relationship is not consensual, and the non-Hindu man starts blackmailing a Hindu woman to convert her religion. In these cases, it is often seen that the Hindu woman is blackmailed with intimate photos and/or videos, threats of harm to her or her family, threats of violence, etc. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because a Dalit Hindu woman was deceived, raped and blackmailed for religious conversion by the Muslim man, Salman, who pretended to be a Hindu. The accused pretended to be Sanjay, befriended the Hindu woman and obtained her details, after which he began blackmailing and harassing her. Firstly, the perpetrator deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with a Hindu woman. This itself is a clear manifestation of bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. By concealing his true identity, he exploited her trust, targeting her under false pretences. This indicates a premeditated intent to manipulate her based on her religious background. In cases like these, the tactic of adopting a false Hindu identity to manipulate and "ensnare" a Hindu individual is not just an act of personal betrayal but can also be interpreted as an expression of disdain or disregard for Hinduism and its customs that reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. Secondly, the Muslim accused obtained her pictures through social media and edited them in an obscene manner to sexually exploit and blackmail the victim. The sexual violation served as an instrument of religious humiliation, designed to shatter personal autonomy and demonstrate absolute dominance. This physical act cannot be separated from its religious context; it represented the culmination of a process intended to break the victim's connection to her culture, as the accused later pressured her for conversion. Such crimes communicate a terrifying message to the entire Hindu community: that their women represent legitimate targets for systematic predation specifically because of their religious identity. Thirdly, the victim was subjected to coercion, harassment and blackmail for religious conversion by the accused. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another is a direct attack on her religious identity and dignity. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. It is important to mention here that the blackmail, extortion and sexual violence were not random acts of crime, but rather they were tools to convert the victim to Islam. They functioned as religiously motivated tools aimed at humiliating and dominating a Hindu woman because of her faith. The target was not the victim as an individual, but her Hindu identity. The clear intention was to break the victim down, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she could be converted. It was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. Even her minor daughter was sexually exploited for the explicit purpose of forcing the victim into compliance, making her more vulnerable, more fearful, and more likely to submit to the accused’s demands. Moreover, the continuous and escalating harassment operated as a broader mechanism of coercion aimed at eroding the victim’s autonomy and pressuring her into religious conversion. The persistent threats, financial extortion, and sexual violence formed a pattern in which harassment itself was weaponised to weaken a Hindu woman’s resistance and compel her to abandon her Hindu faith. This sustained use of intimidation and abuse reflected deep-seated religious hostility and demonstrated how systematic harassment becomes a tool for targeting Hindu women, making the crime inherently religious in nature. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. 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 she was being exploited for over three years. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—8 December 2022—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 8 December 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported. Disclaimer: Though it was reported that only Salman was arrested by the police, since Salman's brother-in-law, Shahrukh, also raped the victim, the perpetrator count has been kept as 2.