Minor Hindu girl abducted, tortured to convert to Islam and raped by Muslim man in Bangladesh

Case ID : 70ed790 | Location : Sylhet, Sylhet District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Sat, 17 May, 2025

Case ID : 70ed790

Sylhet, Sylhet District, Bangladesh

17 May, 2025

Minor Hindu girl abducted, tortured to convert to Islam and raped by Muslim man in Bangladesh

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Ilimpur village, Sylhet, Bangladesh, a 15-year-old Hindu girl was abducted and repeatedly raped by a 19-year-old Muslim youth named Rabiul Haque Rayhan. The accused also tortured the victim to convert to Islam. Reports indicate that the victim was a student at Jagran High School. The accused, Rabiul worked as a servant at Helal Mia's house who lived nearby the victim's home. Rabiul under the pretext of working at Helal's house, had proposed marriage to the minor Hindu girl, but she informed her family about this. As a result, her family warned Rabiul to stop harassing their daughter. Angered by this response, Rabiul abducted the minor girl and took her to an unknown location. He took her to a house in the Kazitula area, where he held her hostage and repeatedly raped her. News outlet Hindu Post quoted a source as confirming that the accused pressured and tortured the girl to convert to Islam. Following the abduction, the victim’s family searched for her but was unable to locate her. Later, the victim’s mother, Anika Rani Biswas, filed a written complaint at the Biswanath Police Station. Police continued the search and found the girl on 30th May 2025. The girl was handed over to the police, and the accused, Rabiul, was arrested. A police official stated: “After receiving the complaint, we have filed an FIR against the accused under the Prevention of Violence against Women and Children Act 2000, Section 7/9(a). We launched an investigation, apprehended the accused, and recovered the victim.” This case serves as a stark reminder of the continued persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, which has only increased manifold since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024. After her violent ouster, Bangladesh plunged into chaos as Islamist extremists have taken advantage of the political turmoil to unleash a wave of terror and violence against the Hindu community. The Islamist mobs have attacked Hindu homes, burned them to the ground, and abducted women in a horrific descent into anarchy. Several temples have been destroyed in various parts of the Islamic country in a major crackdown on Hindus. Reports have exposed how Muslim students forced around 60 Hindu teachers, professors, and government officials to resign. Exiled Bangladeshi activist Asad Noor has also revealed that the minority Hindu community is now being coerced into joining ‘Jamaat-e-Islami’. Hindu religious events have been repeatedly targeted. On 6th September, a procession carrying Lord Ganesha’s idol was attacked in Chittagong. Ahead of Durga Puja, multiple incidents of idol vandalism occurred, including attacks in Mymensingh, Pabna, Rajshahi, Kishoreganj, and Dhaka. On 29th November, a violent Muslim mob attacked three temples in Patharghata, Chittagong, immediately after Jumma Namaz. The crackdown on Hindu voices has also escalated. On 30th November, Hindu journalist Munni Saha was arrested in Dhaka. Muslim mob attacks have increased in Bangladesh, for example, on 22nd May 2025, a Muslim mob carried out arson attacks selectively on Hindu homes in Dahar Mashihati village in Abhaynagar upazila in Jessore district of Bangladesh. Even ISKCON leader Chinmoy Krishna Das Prabhu and his aides have been targeted, and attempts have been made to ban ISKCON and suppress Hindu protests through sedition charges. These arbitrary actions point to a systematic pattern of persecution under Muhammad Yunus’s interim government.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. Within this the subcategory 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. In this case, the abduction and rape of the 15-year-old Hindu girl is not isolated act of sexual violence, but rather a religiously motivated attack rooted in bias and hostility toward the victim’s religious identity. Hate crimes are defined as violent acts motivated by prejudice against a person’s race, religion, or other protected characteristics. Here, the accused targeted the victim specifically because she was a Hindu girl, a member of a minority religious community in a Muslim-majority country. The repeated acts of sexual violence committed after her abduction reflect an intention to dominate, humiliate, and intimidate not only the individual but also the Hindu community as a whole, which is a hallmark of religiously motivated crime. After abducting and raping the victim, the perpetrator forced her to convert to Islam, further underscoring the religious animosity behind the crime. Compelled conversion is not merely a personal imposition; it is an attack on the girl’s right to freely practice her faith. Such instances of forcing the victim to convert through violence and torture are designed to coerce the victim to abandon her faith and accept Islam. The underlying motivation of predatory proselytisation itself is animosity towards the professed faith of the victim. In this case, there was violence involved in the pressure exerted to forcefully convert the Hindu girl. A crucial point in this case is that the victim is a minor. This means there is a complete absence of both consent and genuine change of conscience. It is well established that children are more susceptible to manipulation, as they are still developing emotionally, cognitively, and socially. Their brains are not sufficiently mature to make any adult decisions, such as converting to another religion or engaging in sexual activities. In this case, the perpetrator was fully aware that she was a minor girl, yet he sexually violated her and forced her to convert to Islam. This suggests that the crime was religiously motivated violence rooted in animosity towards the vulnerable Hindu girl. In the context of Bangladesh, where religious minorities, especially Hindus, have faced increasing persecution, forced conversion is a manifestation of broader patterns of discrimination and violence against the Hindu community. Such actions are intended to erase the victim’s religious identity and reinforce the dominance of the Islamic faith, making the crime not personal but communal. Since this case fits the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, therefore, it is being added to the hate crime database.