Hindu woman harassed, offered salary increments and threatened for religious conversion by Muslim manager

Case ID : 9957ebe | Location : Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 31 May, 2025

Case ID : 9957ebe

Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, India

31 May, 2025

Hindu woman harassed, offered salary increments and threatened for religious conversion by Muslim manager

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Case Summary

In Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, a Hindu woman was repeatedly harassed and pressured for religious conversion by her Muslim manager named Safdar Ansari. According to the reports, the victim works in a company located in Sunrise Tower, where her Muslim manager started getting closer to her on the pretext of friendship. The Muslim accused tried to lure her into a relationship by offering salary increments and other personal financial incentives. The Hindu girl stated that the accused, finding her alone in the office, started making obscene comments on her body. The accused even hacked into her mobile phone, allowing him to access her private information, chat logs and call records, among other things. On July 5, 2025, the Muslim accused pressured the Hindu girl for religious conversion and threatened to kill her and her entire family if she refused. He also pressured her to accompany him to a hotel for sexual relations. Despite her repeated refusals, the harassment continued. When she tried to share the ordeal with her family, Safdar again threatened to kill her. The Hindu woman, unable to bear the torture, reached out to the Bajrang Dal (a Hindu organisation). With the help of the Bajrang Dal, the accused was confronted, after which he was handed over to the police. Speaking to the media, the victim disclosed, “He stated that he would provide me with an offer and when I inquired, he claimed that he would raise my salary to Rs 10,000 if I maintained a relationship with him. He then claimed that he would even offer me additional funds from his own pocket if I desired more. I informed him that I was not concerned if it took longer to increase my salary. I wanted to focus on my job and did not wish to follow his recommendations.” The woman had stopped going to work because she was extremely distressed due to the ongoing harassment. As of the date of writing this report, the accused was arrested by the police, and a case was registered against him under Section 3 of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act (MPFRA) and other applicable sections of the BNS.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: - Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, 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 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu woman was repeatedly harassed and pressured for religious conversion by her Muslim manager. In this case, the accused deliberately exploited the power imbalance between them to initiate and sustain a one-sided coercive advances toward the Hindu woman. In reality, he had no interest in the Hindu girl; instead, his only goal was sexual exploitation and the religious conversion of a Hindu woman. The fact that the accused offered her ₹10,000 as a salary increment to start a relationship underscores his malicious intent. This wasn't a casual offer; it was part of a calculated plan to entice and then pressure a Hindu woman into a physical relationship, ultimately using that dynamic to attempt religious conversion. The offer of salary hikes was not separate from the religious motive; in fact, it was deeply tied to it. Offering incentives to encourage conversion, particularly when directed at individuals who are vulnerable or in need, shows that these incentives are not acts of kindness or charity. Instead, they are calculated moves to exploit vulnerable Hindus because of their religion. By providing inducements to a Hindu girl to change her faith, the accused was effectively blackmailing the girl, who might have been desperate for assistance. This form of coercion strips people of their agency and dignity and enforces forced conversions. These are not random or isolated incidents, but rather cases deeply rooted in religious animosity towards Hindu victims. He even went to the extent of hacking into her phone, accessing private chats and call logs. When these tactics failed, he threatened to kill her and her entire family if she didn’t convert. That alone exposes the extreme lengths he was willing to go to achieve religious conversion. These are not isolated advances; they represent a broader pattern of using fear, shame, and manipulation to break the will of Hindu victims and push them toward religious conversion. He was obsessed with controlling, subjugating and dominating a Hindu woman. 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. This belief manifests in practices that seek to erase or overwrite the Hindu identity of the victim through manipulation, inducement, or force. 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: Media reports state that the victim joined the company one and a half months ago, though no exact date or month is provided. To document this case, we have used an indicative date—June 1, 2025—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on July 13, 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.