Tribal Hindu girl lured, sexually exploited and pressured for conversion by Christian father-son duo

Case ID : 5c27880 | Location : Surat, Gujarat, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 11 December, 2023

Case ID : 5c27880

Surat, Gujarat, India

11 December, 2023

Tribal Hindu girl lured, sexually exploited and pressured for conversion by Christian father-son duo

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

In the Mandvi taluka of Surat district, Gujarat, a tribal Hindu girl was lured, sexually exploited, and forcibly converted to Christianity by a Christian man named Dr Ankit Ramji Chaudhary. The accused's father, Ramjibhai Dubalbhai Chaudhary, who was a pastor, was also involved in pressuring the victim for religious conversion. According to reports, the victim came into contact with the accused, Dr Ankit Ramji Chaudhary, around two years earlier in 2023. He ran a clinic and, over a period of nearly two years, sexually exploited her under the false promise of marriage. He subsequently coerced her into converting from Hinduism to Christianity and imposed a condition that her entire family must also abandon their Hindu faith for the marriage to proceed. The victim’s family refused to renounce their Hindu faith. Thereafter, with the support of her family, the victim approached the police and filed a complaint. Based on the complaint, Mandvi police registered a rape case, following which the accused was arrested. Further investigation revealed that the operation was orchestrated by the accused’s father, Ramjibhai Dubalbhai Chaudhary, also known as Ramji Chaudhary, the principal of a government primary school in Pipalwada village, who also functioned as a Christian pastor. Ramji Chaudhary was found to have systematically pressured the victim to convert to Christianity. He was actively involved in illegal conversion activities through his role as president of ‘The Pray for Everlasting Life Charitable Trust’, with which he had been associated since 2014. Police arrested Ramji Chaudhary and produced him before the court to seek custodial remand in order to investigate the full extent of the network, including the number of tribal Hindus converted and the financial and organisational backing behind the operation.

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-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 - 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a tribal Hindu girl was lured, sexually exploited, and forcibly converted to Christianity by the Christian accused, Dr Ankit Ramji Chaudhary. The accused lured her into a relationship, sexually exploited her, and forcibly converted her to Christianity. Firstly, pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another constituted 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 reflected 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. Secondly, the accused sexually exploited the victim for over two years before pressuring her to convert. In such cases, sexual violence often served a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention was to break the victim down emotionally, physically, and spiritually so that she could be converted. This was not random violence; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. Thirdly, the accused also attempted to convert the victim’s family as well by making the conversion of the victim’s entire family a mandatory condition for marriage. This systematic attempt to erode the religious foundation of the victim and her family and replace it with allegiance to another faith reflected deep religious malice and animus against Hindu identity. Further investigation revealed the involvement of the accused’s father, Ramjibhai Dubalbhai Chaudhary, a government school principal and a Christian pastor, who played an active role in pressuring the victim to convert. His position of authority and his association with an organised charitable trust engaged in conversion activities pointed to a broader, structured effort to target vulnerable tribal Hindus for religious conversion, rather than an isolated personal offence. 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 came into contact with the accused in 2023. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—12 December 2023—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 12 Decemver 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.