Hindu man lured with business promise, pressured into religious conversion, circumcision and forced nikah

Case ID : 8da19c4 | Location : Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 20 November, 2022

Case ID : 8da19c4

Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

20 November, 2022

Hindu man lured with business promise, pressured into religious conversion, circumcision and forced nikah

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A 26-year-old Hindu man, Akash Kumar Panika, originally from Jaitpur, was lured to change his religion with the prospect of running a business. He accepted Islam, underwent circumcision, and was sent to a jamaat on the pretext of receiving religious instruction. The victim reported that in 2022, he met a Muslim man named Shakir Hussain while working as a salesman at a bakery in Chiklod, Bhopal, and that Shakir advised him to buy bakery machines and offered financial help on the condition that he convert. Akash said that after the conversion, he took the name Anas Khan and, under pressure, underwent circumcision. He also stated that he had been intimidated into marrying a Muslim woman. He further added that in 2023, he and Shakir started a bakery business and that he repaid the eight lakh rupees provided by Shakir. Despite the repayment, Shakir continued to harass him. Based on the victim’s complaint, the police registered a case and arrested Shakir along with two associates, Mohammad Faheem and Tahir Khan.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category: Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category selected here 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 subcategory 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. In this case, a Hindu man was lured with money and the prospect of owning a business by Muslim men and was then manipulated to convert to Islam. The victim was also stripped of his original name, underwent circumcision and forced to do nikah with a Muslim woman. The nature of the conversion and its wider impact on the Hindu community reveal a targeted assault against Hindus as a collective. When individuals or groups single out Hindus for coercive conversion, they demonstrate a fundamental disregard for Hindu faith and identity. Conversion, when driven not by personal conviction but by inducement or pressure, goes beyond the sharing of a different belief system. It is an attempt to undermine the values, traditions, and identity of the Hindu community. In this case, a Hindu man was specifically targeted, showing open contempt for Hinduism and its followers. Such acts are not mere shifts in personal belief but deliberate attempts to strip a Hindu victim of his faith, making this a religiously motivated crime. The use of financial incentives to encourage conversion to Islam demonstrates clearly that the Muslim perpetrators were not motivated by compassion but by calculation. They exploited the vulnerability of a Hindu man precisely because of his religion. By offering inducements to pressure him into abandoning Hinduism, the perpetrators effectively engaged in emotional coercion, taking advantage of his vulnerable position. Also, after compelling him to accept Islam, the perpetrators went further by imposing a new Islamic name upon him. This was not merely symbolic—it was a calculated effort to erase his Hindu identity and sever his ties with his cultural and religious roots. Such an intentional attempt to efface his personal and religious identity reveals deep prejudice and hostility. By stripping away his Hindu name and enforcing an alien identity, the perpetrators made their animosity unmistakable. These instances of targeted proselytisation activities stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic religions believe that any non-adherent to their beliefs is subject to being dehumanised till they convert, making it a religiously motivated crime against Hindus. Since this case meets multiple parameters of a religiously motivated attack against the Hindu man and his faith, it is being added to the hate crime database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. While the media reported that the coercion began in 2022, it did not specify the exact date or month. Therefore, for record‑keeping, the date and month of reporting of the case are being used along with the year mentioned, 21 November 2022, as a placeholder to represent the beginning of the manipulation.