Hindu families, including children, lured with incentives and brainwashed to convert to Christianity

Case ID : 5c27875 | Location : Palwal, Haryana, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 6 December, 2025

Case ID : 5c27875

Palwal, Haryana, India

6 December, 2025

Hindu families, including children, lured with incentives and brainwashed to convert to Christianity

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Conversion of minor

Case Summary

In the Kailash Nagar area of Palwal, Haryana, poor Hindu families were lured with material inducements to convert to Christianity by a Christian man named Daniel. The Hindu victims endured brainwashing with Christian theology, and one of the minor victims was manipulated and made to pray to Jesus Christ. According to media reports, the victim Hindu families were from economically poor backgrounds, and were enticed into converting to Christianity through offers of money, housing, and free education. Regarding this matter, based on a complaint from a local Hindu man, the Camp police station registered a case against the accused and began an investigation. Camp Police Station in-charge Krishna Gopal stated that Tarun, a Hindu resident of Kailash Nagar, filed the complaint. Tarun stated that the accused, Daniel, lived in a rented house in the colony a few years earlier and gradually began indoctrinating Hindu families by teaching them about Christianity. Later, he built his own house in the colony and converted a large room below it to serve as a prayer room. As per Tarun's complaint, a week earlier, Daniel lured Tarun's 17-year-old nephew to his home with money and free tuition at a Christian school. There, the minor Hindu boy was pressured to pray to "Jesus God" and faced requests to bring family and friends. He was also enticed with the promise of building a house if he and his family converted to Christianity. When Tarun went to Daniel's house with his nephew, he was lured with incentives to convert to Christianity with the promise of two lakh rupees and financial support for their entire family. Daniel took them to the prayer room, asked them to read Christian religious books, and gave them the books in a bag. Tarun also stated in his complaint that on 14th December 2025, at around 10 a.m., he and other residents of the colony saw several Hindu women, men, and children praying at Daniel's house.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected 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 other subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories selected are- 'Pattern of targeting Hindus' 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. In this case, the Christian perpetrator Daniel preyed on several impoverished Hindu families in Kailash Nagar, Palwal, Haryana, luring them towards religious conversion with inducements like money, housing, and free education, a blatant religiously motivated hate crime. These inducements were not acts of kindness or goodwill but predatory methods to exploit the victims' socio-economic vulnerabilities, fulfilling their basic needs only in exchange for abandoning their Hindu faith and converting to Christianity. Such predatory coercion preys on marginalised Hindu communities, stripping them of their religious identity and cultural heritage, which exemplifies deep-seated hatred for Hinduism and the Hindu community, making it a clear instance of religiously motivated crime. Hindu families suffered relentless indoctrination as Daniel brainwashed them with Christianity, a calculated tactic to erode their Hindu beliefs and assert religious dominance, a stark, religiously motivated hate crime. Forcing conversions through such manipulation violated the victims' religious autonomy and beliefs, amounting to an anti-Hindu hate crime rooted in hostility. By turning a large room in his home into a prayer hall, Daniel signalled his brazen ambition to ensnare and convert entire Hindu communities on a massive scale. One of the victims, Tarun's 17-year-old nephew, fell prey to the accused's conversion tactics when he was enticed to Daniel's home with cash, free Christian school tuition, and house promises, then coerced into praying to Jesus Christ and recruiting others, a clear example of religiously motivated predation. Many other minor Hindus faced similar lures through brainwashing with the Bible and forced prayers to Jesus. With minors among the victims, any element of consent or genuine change of conscience was absent from the outset. Due to their young age and lack of maturity, minors remain particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. The Christian perpetrator deliberately targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the minor victims. This case exemplifies coercion and manipulation for religious conversion, constituting a blatant religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus. Even Tarun, the Hindu complainant, faced the same conversion trap when he visited Daniel's house, tempted with two lakh rupees and ongoing financial support for his entire family to abandon Hinduism. This direct offer of cash and aid served as a calculated financial incentive to erode his faith and compel conversion, exemplifying a religiously motivated crime. Tarun witnessed the scale of the operation firsthand when he saw numerous Hindu men, women, and children gathered at Daniel's house. They were compelled to read Christian religious books and pray, with these Christian texts used systematically to sow doubt about Hinduism, brainwash participants, and dismantle their native beliefs. Targeting such a broad group of families from the colony demonstrated premeditated planning and an intent to convert multiple Hindus at once, rather than an isolated or spontaneous act. This reveals a clear pattern of targeting large numbers of Hindus for forced Christian conversions, making it a religiously motivated offence. Such predatory conversion efforts stem from Abrahamic doctrines like Christianity that view non-believers with disdain until they convert, fostering contempt that manifests in targeted crimes against Hindus. Therefore, this case has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker's hate crime database. Disclaimer: In this case, even though media reports stated that several Hindu families, including men, women, and children, faced targeting for conversions, they did not specify the total number of victims. The reports only highlighted two victims: Tarun and his minor nephew. Therefore, for documenting this crime, we have selected the victim count as '2'. This conservative estimate serves documentation purposes only. The Hinduphobia Tracker records dates of incidents based on when the crime occurred rather than when it is reported by the media. Media reports did not specify the exact date of when the crime began. Reports regarding this incident surfaced on 15th December 2025. According to Tarun, on 14th December 2025, he visited the accused's house and saw several Hindu women, men and children targeted for conversion, with his nephew targeted a week earlier. Henceforth, based on all this information, 7th December 2025 has been selected as the indicative date of the incident for this case.