Hindu woman lured in relationship by Muslim man feigning Hindu identity, abused and pressured to convert after marriage

Case ID : 8da15a9 | Location : Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 27 October, 2022

Case ID : 8da15a9

Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

27 October, 2022

Hindu woman lured in relationship by Muslim man feigning Hindu identity, abused and pressured to convert after marriage

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Forced conversion after marriage

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Victim says she was brainwashed/groomed

Case Summary

A Hindu woman from Gorakhpur became a victim of deception after forming a relationship with a Muslim man posing as a Hindu. In 2022, the victim met Naseer Ahmad from Gohalpur through social media, but he introduced himself as “Armaan Singh” and claimed to work in a private company. Their friendship soon turned into love, and after regular meetings, she decided to marry him. When they began the process for a court marriage, she discovered through his documents that his real name was Naseer Ahmad, not Armaan Singh. Despite learning the truth, the woman chose to proceed with the marriage after Naseer assured her that their different religions would never create problems. However, after the marriage, her situation worsened. Naseer pressured her to change her name and later demanded that she convert to his religion. When she refused, he and his family began mistreating her, subjecting her to physical violence, starvation, and emotional abuse, before eventually forcing her out of their home. Left with no choice, the woman filed for divorce about fifteen days before the report. Following this, Naseer threatened to kill her and publicly humiliated her. The victim also had a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter with him, who was visually impaired and under the care of the woman’s parents, who had been providing for the child’s treatment and upbringing. Police officials registered a case against the accused and ensured that the woman received protection.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within this, the first subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category selected in this case is- Name Changed. When a non-Hindu man pretends to be a Hindu to deceive a Hindu woman into a relationship, the act is seen as triggered by malafide intentions. In some cases, the woman eventually accepts the man’s original religious identity and converts after the man’s identity is revealed. These cases could be argued as cases of religious brainwashing and a result of the pressure a woman feels after getting into a relationship with a man. The woman, it can be argued, also changed her religious identity because of the stigma she believes she might face if she chooses to walk out of a deceptive relationship. However, for the purpose of documenting hate crimes, the cases in this subcategory are limited to those where there is explicit violence aimed at religious conversion against the wishes of the victim (force-feeding beef, blackmailing with intimate videos, rape on refusal to convert, etc), or if the woman herself complains of the man’s religious deception. In such cases, it is established that the deception of the non-Hindu man had a specific aim of religious conversion or targeting of the victim due to her Hindu religious identity, therefore, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. The second subcategory selected is: Forced conversion after marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to any Abrahamic faith, like Islam, begins after marriage. 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. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither parties are required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert her religion after marriage. 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 situations, there is application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing, however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. The third subcategory selected is: Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurising the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The fourth subcategory selected is: Brainwashed and/or Groomed. Within this, the tertiary category is: Victim says she was brainwashed/groomed. 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 as hate crimes. In this case, the accused lured the Hindu woman into a relationship by pretending to be Hindu. This act itself reveals bias against the woman and her religion. The accused knew the woman, being Hindu, would likely reject his proposal if she knew his true religious identity, hence he introduced himself as Arman Singh (a Hindu name). Therefore, he deliberately concealed his identity and targeted her. This constituted a direct violation of her right to informed consent regarding whom she chose to be in a romantic relationship with. The perpetrator’s conscious decision to hide his religious identity clearly underscores the religious motive behind this crime. Such identity concealment goes beyond personal deception; it is a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling that specifically targets Hindu women. This pattern of singling out Hindu women using false identities, often with coercion and conversion in mind by Muslim men, demonstrates a fundamental disregard for Hinduism and exposes deeper religious animosity. The pressure upon the victim to convert to Islam emerged only after the marriage. The coercion started with demands of changing her name, then escalated to completely leaving Hinduism and embracing Islam. The victim was threatened, assaulted and subjected to starvation. The Hindu woman was systematically terrorised to break her will and force her to convert to Islam. This pressure was not abstract but sharply coercive, intended to strip her of her autonomy and her religious belonging. The refusal to convert marked a clear turning point, after which the coercion became violent, ultimately leading to the victim being thrown out of the house by her in-laws. Also, the victim stated that she was deceived/groomed by the Muslim man. Once the Hindu woman found out about the real identity of the Muslim man before marriage, the accused coaxed her by claiming that their religious differences wouldn't ever become a problem in their relationship. Believing this lie, the victim agreed to the union. This was not a random act of deception but a sinister plan to achieve his underlying objective of religious conversion. Such actions violated the woman’s fundamental right to practise her own faith and were an attempt to strip her of her Hindu identity. They reflected deep-seated religious hostility and disdain towards Hindus and Hinduism, making this a clear case of a religiously motivated offence. Disclaimer: For the purpose of documentation, the Hinduphobia Tracker has recorded the incident date as October 28, 2024. While the victim’s ordeal began in 2022, no exact day or month was specified in the reports. To maintain consistency, October 28 was chosen as a placeholder, reflecting the date and month when the case was first reported, while the year marks the period when the coercion and conversion are believed to have started. In line with our methodology, the Tracker records incidents based on when the victim’s suffering began, not when they later came to light in the media.