Hindu woman lured into nikah by Muslim grooming gang led by Chhangur Baba; converted, assaulted, and missing since 2019

Case ID : 99580ab | Location : Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 25 July, 2015

Case ID : 99580ab

Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India

25 July, 2015

Hindu woman lured into nikah by Muslim grooming gang led by Chhangur Baba; converted, assaulted, and missing since 2019

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Case Summary

A Hindu woman named Asha Negi was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man named Badar Siddiqui. She subsequently converted to Islam and married Badar in a Nikah ceremony. After this, she was physically assaulted and threatened with death. Asha was initially targeted by a Muslim grooming gang connected to Chhangur Peer, known for forcibly converting several Hindus to Islam. Even the accused, Badar, was a member of the Muslim grooming gang. According to media reports, Asha Negi’s family originated from the Pauri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand and were settled in Meerut. In 2015, Asha met Mehmood Akhtar Siddiqui, a member of the grooming gang, in connection with an insurance policy. She provided her documents to Mehmood to process the policy, which enabled her contact details to reach Badar Akhtar Siddiqui. Badar, who worked as a gym trainer and food supplement supplier in Meerut, began regularly speaking to Asha on the phone. In 2017, Asha underwent a Nikah with Badar, against the wishes of her family. They started living together in Noida, and Asha lost all contact with her family. Following this, in 2019, Asha called her brother and revealed that Badar had been beating her and threatening to kill her. She shared photographs of Badar’s passport, PAN Card, Aadhaar Card, and Voter ID with her brother, explaining that, if anything happens to her, her family would be able to trace Badar using these documents. This was Asha’s final contact with her family. After this, in December 2019, recovery agents from Bajaj Finance arrived at Asha’s home in Meerut. They informed the family that an LED TV and an iPhone had been purchased in her name on an instalment plan, with payments outstanding. The agents said they had initially visited Asha’s Noida residence but, finding no one there, had proceeded to her Meerut address. After discovering Asha was not at her Noida residence, her mother, Basanti Negi, went to the Civil Lines police station in Meerut to file a missing person’s report on 24th December 2019. However, Abdur Rehman, who was posted at the Civil Lines Police Station at the time, refused to file the case, stating it fell under the jurisdiction of the Noida Police. Asha’s brother later recounted, “We went to the house of her so-called husband in 2020. Badar’s parents were present and showed us an affidavit, stating they had severed all ties with Badar. They said they had expelled him and did not know where he was living. Badar’s mother told us her son was not a good man.” However, the victim's brother did not believe Badar’s family and remained convinced they were still in contact with him. He had been making repeated visits to the police station since 2019, but no action had been taken. Asha’s family feared that she might have been killed or trafficked to Gulf countries by the Muslim perpetrator. Following this, Ghaziabad Police Commissioner J Ravindra Gaur suspended Abdur Rehman for refusing to register the complaint of Asha Negi’s family, when he was posted at the Civil Lines Police Station in Meerut. A departmental enquiry was initiated against him. Advocate Vineet Choudhary, lawyer of the victim's family, said that when police refused to help Asha’s family in 2019, he and her family decided to conduct a private investigation. In the investigation, they found that Badar had targeted 5 Hindu women, 3 of whom are missing. In the case of the Muslim grooming/ conversion gang, the police investigations revealed that the gang used social networks, dark web platforms, and dating applications to lure Hindu women. Members initially befriended the women, ensnared them romantically, and then brainwashed them into converting to Islam. The group maintained links with banned terror organisations such as PFI, SIMI, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and they also received foreign funding to facilitate conversions. Uttar Pradesh DGP Rajeev Krishna explained that the gang had managed to convert hundreds of Hindu women across different states. In response to the illegal conversion activities by the Muslim gang, the Yogi Adityanath administration initiated a special drive named “Mission Asmita” against forced conversions. As part of this, seven special teams from Agra police conducted raids in Kolkata, Jammu & Kashmir, Goa, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Uttarakhand, arresting ten accused, including a woman. The case was registered under several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Act, 2021. It is also pertinent to note that the Muslim gang was part of a larger religious conversion racket orchestrated by a Muslim Peer known as Chhangur Baba. The Uttar Pradesh ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) had recently dismantled this organised network, uncovering its systematic operation aimed at targeting and converting Hindu individuals, particularly women and minors, to Islam. According to the investigation, Chhangur Baba provided financial incentives to Muslim men to lure Hindu women, often under false identities by posing as Hindus, and then pressure them into conversion. Once converted, these women were married off through Nikah ceremonies arranged by Chhangur Baba himself. Authorities also discovered that Chhangur Baba had published a book titled Shijra-e-Tayyaba, intended as a manual to propagate Islam. The ATS investigation revealed that his network operated on a structured incentive model: Rs15–16 lakh was paid for converting Brahmin, Sikh, or Kshatriya women; Rs10–12 lakh for OBC women; and Rs8–10 lakh for those from other castes. He, along with his wife, was arrested on 5th July 2025. The ATS confirmed that the gang had received nearly Rs100 crore in foreign funds to facilitate these illegal conversions across India. Members of his own family were reportedly involved in the operation. The Hinduphobia Tracker had previously documented multiple cases involving Chhangur Baba. In all these cases, Hindu victims were religiously profiled, deliberately targeted because of their religious identity, and were forced to convert to Islam through the use of force, deception, harassment, incentives, and intimidation.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category - Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category selected is - Pattern of targeting Hindus. 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. This case qualifies as a hate crime against Hindus due to the systematic, malicious, and religiously prejudiced nature of the conversion campaign. While it is acknowledged that the victim is an adult and has the right to marry or choose or change her religion, this case stands apart because the conversion was not a result of free will or informed choice. Instead, it followed a calculated and gradual process of grooming, manipulation, and indoctrination carried out by members of an organised conversion racket linked to Muslim cleric Peer Chhangur Baba. The victim was emotionally manipulated through peer influence and subtly coerced into abandoning her Hindu identity. Peer Chhangur Baba’s network operated with a clear modus operandi: targeting Hindu individuals, especially women and minors, for conversion using deception, psychological conditioning, and inducement. His organisation offered financial incentives for conversions, used false identities, employed digital platforms to groom victims, and was linked to banned terrorist organisations such as PFI, SIMI, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. The racket received significant foreign funding, reportedly around ₹100 crore, to facilitate these activities. The operation was not religious propagation in good faith but an ideologically driven campaign to undermine the Hindu community. Religious brainwashing and grooming of this nature are not merely subtle—they are predatory. The victim’s trust and emotional vulnerabilities were deliberately exploited to create disaffection toward her faith and induce allegiance to a contrasting one. The conversion was not incidental; it was the direct outcome of religious animosity expressed through a structured campaign. The targeting of Hindus, particularly women, with the intent to erase their identity and forcibly integrate them into another religious framework makes this not just a violation of personal liberty but a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime. Reports also stated that the accused, Badar, had targeted a total of five Hindu women, three of whom were missing. This demonstrates that such actions were not isolated incidents; rather, they were premeditated efforts to target Hindu women because of their religious identity. Such acts are rooted in religious animosity towards the Hindu victims and therefore constitute a religiously motivated hate crime. Furthermore, this was not an isolated event; the Muslim gang operated across state lines and targeted hundreds of Hindu women for conversion. With connections to banned Islamist terrorist organisations and foreign funding, this campaign amounted to an orchestrated attack on the Hindu community, designed to disrupt and weaken it at its roots. The scale and systematic nature of these activities point squarely to a pattern of institutionalised hate and religious enmity towards Hindus and their religion. Another important point to highlight is that the Muslim conversion gang was not acting alone but was part of a wider network led by Chhangur Baba, known for orchestrating forced conversions and manipulating vulnerable people, especially Hindu women, into abandoning their faith. This affiliation demonstrates that the crime was part of a broader, organised effort to target the Hindu community through deceit, manipulation, brainwashing, and coercion, defining it as a hate crime with significant communal and religious implications. It has been proved that Peer Chhangur was running a huge conversion racket and was giving money to Muslim men to lure or coerce Hindu women to Islam. The prices were fixed based on the caste of the Hindu women. This establishes a deliberate and targeted pattern of predatory proselytisation amounting to a hate-driven campaign against Hindus. The Chhangur Baba case is not merely an individual crime but a manifestation of a larger ideological campaign aimed at the gradual Islamisation of India. This agenda seeks to erode Hindu identity and alter the country's demographic and cultural fabric. Muslim extremists often harbour deep-seated animosity towards Hindus and view India as a Hindu collectivity that must be dismantled or subdued. The ideological roots of this mindset go back to the very basis of the Partition of India, which was that the Muslims believed that Islam was a nation unto itself, which could not survive with a Hindu collectivity like India. Historically, Islamic conquests have not always relied solely on military force; they have also operated through psychological coercion, forced conversions, and cultural erasure. This case reflects the continuation of that same mindset in modern forms. Since this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it is being added to the hate crime database. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date and month when the victim's ordeal began. The earliest indication is that she was targeted for the first time in 2015. Since Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began and not when it was reported. Media reported this case on 26th July 2025; therefore, we are using an indicative date of 26th July 2015 as the date of the incident.