Minor Hindu girl exploited with false marriage promise and forced to convert to Islam, targeted with caste-based insults for not acceding to conversion demands
Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
8 December, 2025
Case Summary
A Hindu minor Dalit girl was targeted by a Muslim man named Mohammad Hasnain, a 21-year-old resident of Koiran Patti Garh in Bahadurganj, Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh. He promised to marry her and established physical relations with her on several occasions. He then started pressuring her to convert to Islam. When the girl refused to change her religion, Hasnain pressured her to convert and passed caste-based derogatory remarks at her. On 9 December 2025, the girl’s father approached the Kasimabad police station and filed a complaint. The police registered a case under relevant sections of the POCSO Act and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Police later received information that Hasnain was preparing to flee from the Bahadurganj bus stand. A team then arrested him there on 12 December 2025. During interrogation, he confirmed his identity as the son of Armaan Ahmad. After completing the required formalities, the police produced him before the court. The court remanded him to judicial custody.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case is documented under two primary categories. The first primary category selected is: Cimes against women and other sexual crimes; under which the first secondary category selected is: Brainwashed and/or groomed; under which, the tertiary categories selected are: Rape and sexual assault/harrasment and conversion of minor. 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 second secondary category selected is: Forced conversion before marriage; under which the tertiary category selected is: Forced to do nikah 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 third secondary category selected is: Assault or threat upon refusal to convert When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The second primary category selected is: Predatory Proselytisation; under which, the secondary category selected is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination; under which the tertiary categories selected are: Rape and sexual assault/harassment and conversion of minor Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other category relevant here is- Hate speech against Hindus, and within this, the subcategory 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. The facts of this case indicate that religion and identity were not incidental to the incident but central to it. According to the complaint, the Hindu minor girl was lured with a promise of marriage and drawn into a relationship. The turning point came when the accused began pressuring her to convert to Islam. The coercion to change her religion establishes that her Hindu identity was not neutral in the interaction. It became a point of contestation. When she refused to convert, reports state that he continued to pressure her and used caste-based derogatory remarks against her. It can be argued that caste slurs target her micro identity as a Dalit and not her broader Hindu identity. However, caste exists within the social structure of Hindu society. An attack framed through caste language still operates within a religiously defined context because the victim was being degraded specifically as a Hindu belonging to a Scheduled Caste. In such cases, micro identities like caste may be invoked as the vocabulary of abuse, but the underlying hostility is still directed at the larger religious identity. The pressure to abandon her faith, combined with insults aimed at her caste location within Hindu society, indicates that her identity as a Hindu girl was central to the alleged coercion. When a minor is induced into a relationship, then pressured to renounce her religion, and insulted through caste slurs upon refusal, the sequence reveals more than a personal dispute. The refusal to convert appears to have triggered escalation. That link between faith, coercion, and abuse situates the incident within the framework of identity-targeted hostility. In this sense, the conduct was not confined to the exploitation of a minor. It also involved an attempt to alter her religious identity and humiliation tied to her place within the Hindu social structure. That combination gives the incident a communal and hate-driven dimension beyond the immediate relationship.
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 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
