Hindu woman murdered by Muslim man after refusing to convert to Islam in Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh

Case ID : 9958186 | Location : Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 1 August, 2025

Case ID : 9958186

Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

1 August, 2025

Hindu woman murdered by Muslim man after refusing to convert to Islam in Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Murder upon refusal to convert

Case Summary

In Navra village, Burhanpur district, Madhya Pradesh, a Hindu woman was brutally murdered by a Muslim man named Sheikh Raees after she refused to convert to Islam and marry him. For a long time, the accused Sheikh Raees had been pressuring Bhagyashree to convert and marry him. He mentally harassed her and continued to threaten her despite her repeated refusals. On the day of the incident, following a dispute, Raees arrived with a knife and launched a brutal attack on Bhagyashree, stabbing her multiple times. A deep wound to her throat led to her immediate death on the spot. The accused, Sheikh Raees, who runs a dairy shop in Matapur Bazaar and whose wife had already left him, was arrested by the Nepanagar police. A case was registered under sections related to murder and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. After the incident, Bhagyashree's grieving family staged a protest by placing her body on the road and demanding the demolition of Raees’s house and shop. Massive outrage followed in the region, with Hindu organisations demanding justice and swift action. Hindu groups, including the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and Hindu Jagran Manch, launched a protest by calling for a bandh in Nepanagar and Navra. Members of these organisations went from shop to shop requesting business owners to shut down in protest of the brutal murder and religious targeting of a Hindu woman. Senior officials, including SP Devendra Kumar Patidar and Additional SP A. S. Kanesh, visited the crime scene on Saturday morning. Initial investigations confirmed a prior relationship and dispute between the victim and the accused. The victim’s sister, Subhadra, narrated that they had even approached the police station earlier that day because Raees was torturing Bhagyashree and putting pressure on her to change her religion. Despite clear warning signs, police inaction contributed to the tragedy. Two police personnel from the Navra outpost have been suspended for negligence. Protests intensified as Hindu groups and community leaders demanded the immediate demolition of Raees’s property and action against three others suspected of being involved in the conspiracy. Local SDM Bhagirath Wakhla, SDOP Nirbhay Singh Alawa, and TI Abhishek Jadhav met the family to assure them of justice. Nepanagar MLA Manju Dadu and Balai Samaj president Manoj Parmar also visited the bereaved family and promised full support. After hours of protest and assurance from the administration, the family agreed to conduct the final rites around 6:50 p.m.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the Primary category- Crime against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within this, the subcategory selected is - Forced Conversion before marriage. 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. The other sub-category selected is - Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The other sub-category selected is - Murder or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is forced to convert her religion and upon her refusal to do so, the non-Hindu partner murders the victim. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressuring the Hindu woman to convert. In some of these cases, the association could be non-consensual as well or, the religious identity of the non-Muslim man could be previously unknown to the Hindu victim. In such cases, the Hindu woman is first pressurized to change her religion by the non-Hindu man. The pressure could involve threats and/or violence. The trigger to murdering the woman in these cases is her refusal to comply and change her religion under threat and/or force. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. In this case, the Hindu woman was pressured to convert to Islam. The relationship with Sheikh Raees involved sustained coercion in which he demanded that she abandon her Hindu identity and convert to Islam. The religious pressure was not incidental; it was central to the dynamic of the relationship and eventually escalated to violence, showing that her religious identity as a Hindu was the specific target. The victim faced continual mental harassment and threats because she refused to convert to Islam. The accused used emotional torture and threats of harm to try to force her conversion. The violence she endured was not random or incidental—it was a direct consequence of her refusal to renounce her Hindu religion, which makes it a religiously motivated hate crime. The final and most severe escalation in this case was the brutal murder of the victim when she stood firm in her refusal to convert. The motive behind the murder was not a generic personal dispute but her rejection of pressure to convert to Islam. The murder is driven by the religious identity of the victim and her resistance to forced conversion. The victim lost her life because she would not give up her faith. This case is not a standalone act of violence. It is a targeted hate crime committed against a Hindu woman who was coerced, threatened, and ultimately killed for refusing to abandon her religious identity. Each stage of the crime—emotional harassment, coercive threats, and murder—was driven by her firm refusal to convert to Islam. This incident is not merely crimes against individuals, but a deliberate attack on Hindu identity and dignity, and must be recorded, remembered, and addressed as a hate crime. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that the report does not specify the exact date when the woman's ordeal began, but it mentions that the accused murdered her on 2nd August, 2025. Since this is the earliest date mentioned, we are considering this as when the victim's ordeal began and using this as the incident date. 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.