Hindu man pressured, physically assaulted, and threatened with death to convert to Christianity; police denies communal angle

Case ID : 9958563 | Location : Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 29 August, 2025

Case ID : 9958563

Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India

29 August, 2025

Hindu man pressured, physically assaulted, and threatened with death to convert to Christianity; police denies communal angle

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Kachhauna, Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu youth was pressured to convert to Christianity by four Christian individuals. The victim was also subjected to physical assault and death threats by the accused. The Hinduphobia Tracker contacted the police. The police confirmed that the victim was Hindu and stated that, according to the victim’s account, the Christian accused attempted to force him to convert to Christianity. However, the police denied a communal angle and maintained that the matter was a dispute between the two parties over a road issue. According to media reports, the incident came to light when the Hindu victim, a resident of Mahri village, under the Baghauli police station area, lodged a complaint at the local station. The victim stated that he was returning home from his farm at around 1 p.m. on 30th August 2025 when four Christians from the village stopped him. They pressured him to convert to Christianity, and when he refused, they attacked him with sticks and threatened to kill him. Inspector Brijesh Mishra, in charge of Baghauli police station, said that the case was being investigated based on the victim’s complaint. He added that legal action would be taken on the basis of the findings of the investigation.

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- 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. This incident is an instance of a hate crime because the attack on the Hindu victim was directly motivated by his religious identity as a Hindu. The actions of the Christian perpetrators were not general acts of violence; they specifically revolved around his faith and the demand that he abandon it. Firstly, the accused attempted to force the Hindu victim to renounce his religion and convert to Christianity. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard his religious faith and embrace another is a direct attack on his religious identity and dignity. It is not a matter of personal choice; it is coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act is not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Secondly, when the Hindu victim refused to convert to Christianity, the Christian perpetrators physically assaulted him with sticks. This demonstrates that the violence was not random but explicitly conditional on his rejection of conversion. The assault, therefore, became a punishment for retaining his Hindu identity. The use of physical force in this context highlights that the hostility was religiously motivated violence intended to break his resistance and intimidate him into submission. Thirdly, in addition to being assaulted, the Hindu victim was also threatened with death. Threatening to kill someone for refusing to abandon their religion illustrates an extreme form of intimidation and religious hostility. It shows that the perpetrators were not merely pressuring or assaulting him, but were prepared to escalate to ultimate violence to strip him of his Hindu faith. Such threats reveal the intensity of the hatred, firmly placing this act within the framework of a hate crime. Another point to address is that the police attempted to deny the communal angle to the crime. In such cases, where the motive behind the crime is obvious but not explicitly mentioned, the police deny that the crime committed was in any way motivated by a religious bias or say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to the crime. Several factors are generally at play here. Many a time, the police downplay incidents of low-level communal crime because it is their jurisdiction that comes under question. The police also often say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to a crime when there was one because they wish to ensure that, owing to the crime already committed, there is no further flare-up in the area. However, a police statement cannot be enough to determine whether there is a communal angle present in the crime that has been committed. In fact, to determine whether the crime is communal in nature or not, we need to give emphasis to the ground realities. For example, in the case of Rinku Sharma, the Bajrang Dal activist who was mercilessly stabbed in his house in front of his family members in Delhi’s Mangolpuri area in the year 2021, the leftist media and the leftist ecosystem had tried to peddle that there was no communal angle to the crime. Even the police denied that the crime was communal in nature. However, Opindia spoke to several people who are on the ground with the family of Rinku Sharma, and we were told that the communal tension in the area is palpable. The family of Rinku Sharma has said that the Muslims of the area held a grudge against Rinku ever since he celebrated the Ram Mandir verdict. Like the case of Rinku Sharma, those cases where even if the police have denied a communal angle, the ground reality, like the victim, the victim’s family or the relative's testimonies, make it clear that there was an obvious religious bias that led to the crime, will be documented in this tracker. Going by the same logic, in this case, the Hindu victim himself stated that he was forced to convert to Christianity, and that he was assaulted and threatened for refusing to do so. This clearly showcases religious animosity as the motivating factor behind the crime. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database.