Tribal Hindu family targeted, harassed and offered inducement for religious conversion by members of Muslim community

Case ID : 5c27873 | Location : Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 15 December, 2025

Case ID : 5c27873

Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh, India

15 December, 2025

Tribal Hindu family targeted, harassed and offered inducement for religious conversion by members of Muslim community

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Case Summary

In the Baghadu village of Duddhi tehsil, Sonbhadra, a tribal Hindu family were offered inducements and pressured for religious conversion by members of the Muslim community. According to reports, a tribal Hindu man named Manoj Gaur stated that his family consists of four daughters and a younger son. He stated that a Muslim man named Bahadur Ali was pressuring his four daughters to convert to Islam and marry him. Renu Kumari, Manoj's daughter, in her complaint stated that Bahadur Ali, Naseem Uddin, Ajmat Ali, Razia Panika, and Abdul Subhan repeatedly visited her home and pressured her family to convert to Islam. The accused also claimed that marrying them and converting to Islam would make the victim's family rich, and their lives would change. The accused also issued death threats and subjected Renu Kumari to harassment and molestation while she travelled to college. Renu Kumari further revealed that Bahadur Ali had previously married an Adivasi woman and purchased multiple plots of land in the names of his wife and brother-in-law, facilitating the settlement of Muslims in the village. The matter escalated after it was discovered that land records and family registers had been tampered with, prompting the Sub-Divisional Magistrate to initiate a formal inquiry and issue notices related to land transactions. Based on the complaint filed by the victim's family, the police registered a case against Bahadur Ali, Naseem Uddin, Ajmat Ali, Razia Panika, and Abdul Subhan under provisions relating to coercive religious conversion, harassment, and offences under the SC/ST Act. As of the date of writing this report, the investigation was ongoing. This sequence of events reflected a systematic pattern that was witnessed in parts of the Duddhi region and parts of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, in which members of the Muslim community lured tribal Hindu girls with inducements of financial security and social advancement to initiate religious conversion, followed by intimidation when resistance was shown. Thereafter, using the tribal status, members of the Muslim community acquired tribal land by exploiting marital ties, manipulation of identity records, and misuse of the Scheduled Tribe status, enabling the gradual transfer of land and settlement of members of the Muslim community in the area.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being - Pattern of targeting Hindus and Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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 the 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 proselytisation, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other sub-category 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. The other sub-category selected here 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a tribal Hindu family was offered inducements and pressured for religious conversion by members of the Muslim community. Firstly, the accused attempted to convert the tribal family to Islam by harassing them and pressuring them. Pressuring a Hindu family to discard their religious faith and embrace another is a direct attack on their 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 is not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Secondly, the accused also attempted to offer inducements for conversion to the victim's family by claiming that conversion to Islam would make them rich and their lives would change. Offering incentives or making false promises, especially when directed at vulnerable individuals in need, shows that these incentives are not acts of kindness or charity. Instead, they are calculated moves to exploit vulnerable Hindus because of their religion. By providing inducements in exchange for conversion, the accused were effectively blackmailing those who might have been desperate for assistance or hope. This systematic attempt to erode the religious foundation of individuals and replace it with allegiance to another faith reflects deep religious malice and animus against the Hindu identity. This form of coercion strips people of their agency and dignity and results in coerced conversions. These are not random or isolated incidents, but rather cases deeply rooted in religious animosity towards Hindu victims. Thirdly, the accused also sexually harassed and molested Renu Kumari while she travelled to college. Often in such cases, sexual harassment or violence serves a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention was to break the victim down, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she and her family could be converted. This was not random; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity 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. This case was part of a broader pattern observed in the Duddhi region, wherein tribal land was illegally acquired by the Muslim community through marriages, identity manipulation, and coercive religious conversion. Subsequently, members of the Muslim community were settled on this newly acquired land, contributing to a gradual demographic shift in tribal-dominated areas. The conversion of tribal Hindu families and the illegal acquisition of their land were not isolated acts but interconnected processes aimed at altering the social and demographic composition of the region. Because the core motivation of the act stems from hostility toward the victim’s religion, it meets the threshold of a hate crime. Hence, categorised as a hate crime in the database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media, 16 December 2025.