Case Summary

A 21-year-old Hindu woman was abducted by three men from Pipra Kalyan village in Maharajganj on 21 September 2025 with the intention of converting and marrying her. The victim reported that the abductors pressured her to adopt Islam and attempted to force her into marriage, even taking her to a cleric. The attempt stopped only because the police, acting on her mother’s complaint, reached the location in time. The police registered a case against the main accused, Eshanul (22), and two of his accomplices, Shafiq (25) and Ajay (20). The victim’s mother stated that the police did not initially register the case under charges related to forced conversion and instead detained the accused only for breach of peace. After their release, the men returned to her home on 2nd October 2025, attempted to take the victim away again, and threatened to kill her when she resisted. During this incident, Eshanul assaulted both the women, who were only saved when neighbours intervened after hearing the commotion. The mother further said that the family felt unsafe because the accused were influential and had a history of troubling women in the area. She also stated that the police dismissed their complaint by calling it an old matter, leading the family to seek help from the court. Following the court’s order, the police registered a case (FIR no. 0275) on 14 November 2025 and began investigating.

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Why it is Hate Crime ?

The case has been added to the tracker under the first prime category of: Predatory proselytisation. Under this, the sub-category 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. The second primary category selected here is: Attack not resulting in death. With it, the first sub-category selected here is: Attacked for refusal to convert. When there is pressure, threat or coercion employed upon the Hindu victim to convert to a different religion, in several cases, the victim refuses to succumb to the pressure/threats. Once the victim refuses, the perpetrator proceeds to attack/assault the victim owing to his/her refusal to convert. In such cases, the pressure/threat/intimidation/coercion/violence itself is driven by animosity towards the victim’s Hindu faith. The violence, then, is another hate crime driven by the victim’s refusal to abandon his professed faith, Hinduism, and convert to the religion of a non-Hindu perpetrator. Since the victim’s faith is at the heart of the pressure to convert and the ensuing violence towards the victim, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The second sub-category selected here is: Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim. In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. This case involves Muslim men who tricked and abducted a Hindu girl and tried to coerce her to convert to Islam and marry. It is important to highlight that the girl resisted and was saved after police intervention. Despite this, the accused persistently harassed the victim and her mother for conversion and coerced the girl to perform Nikah after adopting Islam. The purpose of this act was to destroy her religious identity. In the Islamic faith, the conversion of the non-Muslim partner is seen as a prerequisite for Nikah, which was why the Hindu girl was pressured for religious conversion. The attempt of forced religious conversion reveals the intent of the accused to strip the victim of her Hindu identity and impose Islam upon her. Forced conversions such as this do not occur in a vacuum; they are rooted in deep‑seated hostility towards the faith of the victim, which makes this a clear case of a crime driven by religious hatred. Also, the victim's mother stated that Eshanul, along with two other culprits, was released from jail soon after the abduction attempt and subsequently started harassing the victim. On 2nd October 2025, all three accused had entered her house and physically assaulted the mother and daughter for not submitting to their wishes, threatening them with murder if the resistance continued. The demand that she convert to Islam was a demand for visible, public, religious surrender. Muslims were not merely trying to establish a relationship. They were trying to forcibly re-engineer the victim's religious identity in a way that would make her Muslim in practice, in dress, in space, and in marital structure. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith. Therefore, religious conversions are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. 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: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the harassment began. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the abduction happened: 21 September 2025. Disclaimer- The perpetrator's religion in this case has been recorded as Muslim because the two primary accused are Muslims. While the tracker acknowledges the involvement of one other accused named Ajay, the categorisation follows the religion of the main perpetrators to maintain consistency across the database. This method ensures clarity in data representation while still recognising that individuals of other backgrounds may also have participated in the incident.