Minor Hindu girl beaten by teacher for resisting pressure to convert in Rajasthan
Sikar, Rajasthan, India 
23 July, 2025
Case Summary
In Neem Ka Thana, Sikar district, Rajasthan, a schoolteacher at a Christian missionary school named St. Xavier's Secondary School pressured a Hindu student to abandon her faith and adopt another religion. The victim is a Class 6th girl whose grandfather, Bhanwar Singh, later filed a formal complaint with local authorities. When the child resisted the teacher's religious coercion, the educator responded by physically assaulting her. The Neem Ka Thana police registered the case under relevant legal provisions and commenced an immediate investigation. The school administration countered these claims by presenting an alternative sequence of events. According to school authorities, the teacher had merely disciplined the student for failing to complete academic responsibilities, administering minor corporal punishment with parental consent. They characterised the religious conversion allegations as entirely unfounded, suggesting the claims surfaced only after routine disciplinary measures. The school director maintained that the interaction focused solely on academic performance and standard classroom discipline. The Vishva Hindu Parishad intervened following the incident, demanding rigorous legal action against both the teacher and the school management. VHP representative Amitosh Pareek emphasised the necessity for a thorough examination of a pattern of religious targeting in educational environments. This occurrence followed closely upon another contentious episode in Kota, Rajasthan, where similar concerns about religious influence in schools had arisen. Police continued their probe as community tensions persisted over the fundamental question of whether the incident represented inappropriate religious influence or merely routine educational discipline.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category in this case is: Predatory proselytisation. The first subcategory under this is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category under this is: Conversion of minor. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The second subcategory under this 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 minor Hindu girl studying in the 6th grade was subjected to a systematic attempt by her teacher—an authority figure with fiduciary influence—to abandon her ancestral faith and adopt a contrasting religion. The teacher’s position of power in an educational setting creates a context of trust and vulnerability, which has been exploited for religious indoctrination. It is further important to note here that the victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. The subsequent physical assault, when the child resisted, demonstrates how such psychological manipulation frequently escalates to overt coercion when initial indoctrination fails. The physical assault occurred only after the Hindu student resisted religious conversion. This establishes a direct link between the victim’s religious resistance and the ensuing violence, making it a form of coercive religious persecution grounded in hostility toward her Hindu identity. Hence, this case is categorised as a hate crime. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date on which the ordeal of the victim began. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Unknown
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
female
Sources 
