Hindu woman abducted and raped, her minor son offered money and other inducements to covert to Islam

Case ID : 595490e | Location : Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 24 November, 2024
Case ID : 595490e
location Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India
date 24 November, 2024
Hindu woman abducted and raped, her minor son offered money and other inducements to covert to Islam
Predatory Proselytisation
Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement
Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination
Rape and sexual assault/harassment
Conversion of minor
Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A Hindu man in Indore filed a missing report for his wife and 13-year-old son at the Lasudia police station. According to the complaint, a Muslim man named Abdul had abducted the woman and her son. They were initially kept at a religious site in Indore where attempts were made to convert both to Islam. The child was offered various incentives to convert but he refused. Two days later, on November 27, the woman and her son were moved to Bhopal. While in Bhopal, further attempts to brainwash the child were made, including promises of monetary rewards. However, the child insisted on returning to his father. On November 29, Abdul reportedly left the boy outside his home before fleeing. The boy then informed his father about the ordeal, prompting him to seek assistance from the Hindu organization- Hindu Jagran Manch. The woman later returned to her maternal home on December 8. When her husband questioned her, she initially claimed to have been at a relative’s house. However, she eventually confessed that Abdul had taken her and revealed that she had been raped during the ordeal. Members of the Hindu Jagran Manch who visited the police station demanded immediate action against the accused.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the prime category of- Predatory Proselytisation. Under this, three sub-categories have been selected. The first is- Conversion/attempts to convert by inducement. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. The second sub-category under which the case has been placed 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. 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. The third sub-category selected under the above-mentioned category is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. Further, based on case details, two tertiary categories have also been selected under this sub-category, namely- '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 details of this case reveal that the Muslim perpetrator, to alienate the Hindu victims from their professed faith inflicted torture on them. The Hindu woman and her son were kept in confinement. The mother was raped while the son was brainwashed and offered inducements, all because the perpetrator wanted them to renounce their faith and accept Islam. Further, the accused in this instance attempted to entice the Hindu victims to renounce their faith and adopt Islam by offering them financial assistance. Luring individuals from lower social classes with material temptations is a classic tactic used by such perpetrators to force their victims to abandon their stated religion and accept a foreign one. It is evident from the details that the Hindu victims here included a child, which essentially means that the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Since the underlying offence, in this case, was against a minor child of a specific faith and involved subtle tactics of indoctrination, which obviously stems from a bias against the Hindu faith, this case is a clear case of religious hate. The Muslim accused was also attempting to convert them by offering inducement of money, which clearly means that he attempted to lure them into conversion by violating their religious freedom and exploiting their vulnerabilities to impose a different religious identity on them. Since exploiting vulnerabilities for the explicit purpose of conversion is purely based on animosity towards the victim's faith, this case has been categorised as a religiously motivated hate crime.

Victim Details

Total Victim

2

Deceased

0


Gender

  • Male 1
  • Female 1
  • Third Gender 0
  • Unknown 0

Caste

  • SC/ST 0
  • OBC 0
  • General 0
  • Unknown 2

Age Group

  • Minor 1
  • Adult 1
  • Senior Citizen 0
  • Unknown 0
Case Status Background
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Case Status


Arrested

Case Status Background
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Perpetrators Details

Perpetrators


Muslim Extremists

Perpetrators Range


One Person

Perpetrators Gender


male

Case Details SVG
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