Hindu woman promised ₹50,000 and healing by Christian missionaries, fed meat and threatened with death for refusing conversion

Case ID : 63c00c9 | Location : Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 8 October, 2024

Case ID : 63c00c9

Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh, India

8 October, 2024

Hindu woman promised ₹50,000 and healing by Christian missionaries, fed meat and threatened with death for refusing conversion

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was offered inducements for religious conversion by Christian missionaries. Furthermore, she was also given death threats for refusing to come into the Christian fold. According to the victim, she had been seriously ill for a long time and wasn't able to afford treatment due to financial difficulties. Around eight months ago, two women from her village, named Sumitra Kaur and Chhido Kaur, who had previously converted to Christianity, came to her house and encouraged her to convert to Christianity. They told her that she would receive ₹50,000 upon conversion and that her illness would also be cured through the prayers of a Christian priest. Thus, Pastor Harjeet Singh, along with Meena Kaur and Surjeet Kaur, took the woman to the bank of the Sharda River, where she was instructed to close her eyes and take a dip in the water. Furthermore, she was given pieces of meat as a religious offering or prasad. Despite undergoing conversion, the woman's health did not improve, nor did she receive any financial support. Thus, she stopped attending religious gatherings. On October 9, 2024, Surendra Singh and Harjinder Singh forcefully entered her home, confronted her and pressured her to attend Christian religious gatherings. They also gave her death threats and threatened her with harm to her life and property if she failed to comply. As of the date of writing this report, the woman had sought police protection.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: - Predatory proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category 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 sub-category relevant here 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu woman was deceived into converting to Christianity by Christian missionaries. She was offered ₹50,000 for conversion and was told that her illness would be cured through prayers. Offering incentives to encourage conversion, especially when people are facing financial troubles, shows that these incentives are not acts of kindness or charity. Instead, they are calculated moves to exploit the victim's vulnerability with the sole aim of defranchising her or him from their original faith and drawing them towards religious conversion. By providing inducements to Hindus to change their faith, the accused were effectively blackmailing those who might have been desperate for assistance. Such instances are seen in many cases where members of Christian missionary groups target socially and economically vulnerable Hindus to further their agenda of religious conversions. This form of coercion strips people of their agency and dignity and enforces forced conversions. These are not random or isolated incidents, but rather cases deeply rooted in religious animosity towards Hindu victims. Promising to cure her illness was another tactic used to emotionally manipulate her. These so-called religious gatherings are framed as healing sessions, offering desperate people a way out of suffering, on the condition that they accept Christianity. The religious motive here is evident: her Hindu identity was seen as something to be replaced, and her vulnerabilities became the means to achieve that. Additionally, when the victim's illness wasn't cured, nor did she receive any of the promised money, she stopped attending the gatherings. In a way, she attempted to walk from the Christian fold. But this was not tolerated. The two missionaries came and harassed her, issuing death threats in an attempt to subjugate her free will and force her to comply with the Christian faith. This clearly shows how coercion and fear are used to keep people trapped once they have been inducted. Such threats and harassment are not random. It is religiously motivated coercion, aimed at eroding the victim’s identity and forcing conformity through fear. Such acts are inherently rooted in hate, not just toward the individual, but toward the faith she represents. The Christian faith, by its very theological foundations, places a strong emphasis on proselytisation. In pursuit of conversion objectives, Christian evangelists often employ unethical means, ranging from psychological pressure and misinformation to inducements such as money or jobs. These tactics are designed not as acts of charity but as tools to engineer religious change under the guise of social upliftment, particularly among vulnerable and underprivileged communities. Thus, this case is symbolic of a broader pattern of targeting Hindus through manipulation, inducements and threats, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: - Media reports state that the victim was given death threats on October 9, 2024, but do not provide details about when the initial conversion attempt took place. To document this case, we have used October 9, 2024, as the indicative date of the incident to represent the beginning of her ordeal. Although media coverage of the case emerged on June 10, 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s suffering began, not when it was reported.