Hindu woman lured, deceived and coerced to convert to Islam for nikah by Bangladeshi Muslim man

Case ID : 8da1a10 | Location : Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 20 November, 2019

Case ID : 8da1a10

Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

20 November, 2019

Hindu woman lured, deceived and coerced to convert to Islam for nikah by Bangladeshi Muslim man

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to do Nikah

Case Summary

A Hindu woman named Reena Chauhan was lured, deceived and coerced to convert to Islam by a Bangladeshi Muslim man named Mamun Hasan. He also changed her name and performed nikah (Islamic marriage) with her. According to reports, the victim, a resident of Tyuni, Uttarakhand, came into contact with the accused through Facebook. The accused then travelled to India on a tourist visa in 2019, 2020 and 2021 to meet the victim. He lured her into a relationship, and, in 2022, he took her to Bangladesh by illegally crossing the border. The accused then forcibly converted the victim to Islam and performed nikah (Islamic marriage) with her. He also renamed her to Farzana Akhtar, essentially a Muslim name. The victim later revealed that she felt threatened in Bangladesh because of the accused, due to which she converted to Islam to protect herself. Subsequently, the couple returned to India illegally and began living in Dehradun, using a fabricated Indian identity. The Doon Police, during their investigation, found that the accused had been living in Dehradun using fake Indian documents, which he got made by the victim. Police also recovered the Bangladeshi marriage certificate, the forged conversion certificate naming Reena as Farzana Akhtar, and other documents showing a coordinated process of grooming, religious conversion, and infiltration across the India–Bangladesh border.

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 subcategory selected is - Brainwashed and/or 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 a hate crime. The other sub-category selected here is - Forced conversion before marriage, with the tertiary category being - Forced to do nikah. In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. 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, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. 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 the situations, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurizing the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. This case has been added to the tracker because the Hindu woman, Reena Chauhan, was lured, deceived and coerced to convert to Islam by the Muslim accused, Mamun Hasan. Firstly, in Islam, marriage to a non-Muslim partner is prohibited, which was why she was converted to Islam before marriage. The purpose of forced religious conversion reveals the intent of the accused to strip the victim of her Hindu identity and impose an Islamic one 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. Secondly, the accused coerced the victim to abandon her Hindu faith and adopt Islam after taking her illegally to Bangladesh. He created a hostile and threatening environment for her in Bangladesh, leaving her isolated and without support, due to which she stated that she converted to Islam under pressure to protect herself. Pressuring a Hindu woman to discard her religious identity in such circumstances constituted a direct assault on her dignity and autonomy. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Thirdly, the victim was taken to Bangladesh in an effort to isolate her from her community and social circle so as to make her more susceptible to conversion. The intention was to break the victim down, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she has no option but to convert. These actions were not random; they were systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. Even her name was changed to Farzana Akhtar, essentially a Muslim name, to further isolate her and erase her previous Hindu identity. It was a symbolic assertion of Islamic identity over the Hindu identity. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. Such acts were not merely personal crimes; they were rooted in a desire to dominate and erase the religious identity of the victim. 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: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, though it is mentioned that the accused came to meet her in 2019. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—21 November 2019—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering, aligning with the date the accused was arrested. While media coverage of the incident emerged later, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.