Minor Hindu girls raped, forced to convert to Christianity in Missionary-run school in Rohtas, Bihar
Rohtas, Bihar, India 
26 August, 2025
Case Summary
A case of systematic forced conversion and sexual violence against minor girls emerged at GEMS English School and its affiliated tailoring institute in Sikaria village, Sasaram, Bihar. The Rohtas District Child Welfare Committee exposed these crimes during a formal inspection on 8 September 2025, prompted by the disappearance of a teenage girl from Gaya district whose mother had filed a police report three days earlier. During the investigation, committee members discovered that the institution targeted children from economically disadvantaged families, luring them with promises of education and vocational training. The team, led by chairman Santosh Kumar and including police representatives, found no official enrolment or attendance records for the girls present. The situation escalated when investigators witnessed staff physically dragging a distressed girl. Upon questioning, they said that the girl had a stomachache. It was later revealed to have been raped by four men. Medical examination confirmed sexual assault before her transfer to a shelter home. On 9 September 2025, authorities rescued seven girls from the premises and relocated them to protective custody. Several victims stated that they were forced into religious conversion, and their nomination forms showed suspicious changes to their listed religion. The committee formally recommended a high-level judicial inquiry to district magistrate officials, noting the involvement of both educational and tailoring institutions in these crimes. Sasaram SP Roshan Kumar confirmed the formation of a special investigation team to examine the systematic exploitation and religious coercion network. The case demonstrates deliberate targeting of vulnerable Hindu minors through fraudulent educational schemes, combining sexual violence with religious conversion efforts. The institution's operation without documentation, coupled with physical abuse and inadequate medical response to victims, reveals a coordinated pattern of criminal activity rather than isolated offences.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The 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. Another subcategory under this is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories under this are: Conversion of Minor and 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. The Sasaram case has been documented within the Hinduphobia Tracker because it constitutes a definitive and severe instance of predatory proselytisation, systematically executed through a combination of psychological manipulation, physical coercion, and sexual violence specifically targeting Hindu minors. This incident transcends mere criminality; it represents a coordinated hate crime driven by religious animosity, designed to dismantle the Hindu identity of its victims through a calculated process of breaking their will and erasing their cultural and religious foundations. The institution’s methodology aligns precisely with the subcategory of conversion achieved through harassment, threats, and coercion. The physical abuse witnessed by investigators, culminating in the gang rape of a victim, was not an isolated act of sexual violence but a calculated instrument of religious coercion. Sexual assault served a dual purpose: to inflict profound psychological trauma that breaks the victim’s spirit and to create a potent tool for blackmail and continued control. This tactic constitutes the most extreme form of harassment intended to "demean, humiliate, and intimidate" based on religious identity. The goal was to make the preservation of their Hindu faith synonymous with unbearable physical and emotional suffering, thereby making religious conversion appear as the only available pathway to safety or cessation of abuse. This systematic use of sexual violence to facilitate religious compliance demonstrates a clear ideological motive to destroy Hindu identity through the most brutal means available. Furthermore, the case exemplifies the subcategory of proselytisation through grooming and brainwashing. The perpetrators established a fraudulent educational framework to exploit the fiduciary trust inherent in such institutions, deliberately targeting children from economically disadvantaged Hindu families. This premeditated selection capitalised on their vulnerability and the societal expectation that schools serve as safe havens for development. The complete absence of enrolment or attendance records was not an administrative failure but a deliberate operational strategy to maintain deniability and isolate the victims from external oversight. Within this controlled environment, the perpetrators engaged in systematic indoctrination, a process far more nuanced than overt threats, which involved gradually undermining the girls' existing beliefs and replacing them with foreign religious doctrines. This manipulation exploits the inherent power dynamic between educator and student, making resistance psychologically formidable for any child, and exemplifies the "subtle and forcible indoctrination" defined as a core component of religious hate crimes. The alteration of religious identifiers on official documents provides tangible evidence of the ultimate objective: the erasure of the victims' Hindu identity and its forced replacement with another. This final step confirms that the sexual violence and psychological manipulation were not ends in themselves but means to achieve a specific religious outcome. Consequently, this case is classified as a religiously motivated hate crime because the victims were selected specifically for their Hindu identity, the methods employed were designed to systematically dismantle that identity, and the final objective was its forced replacement. Every facet of the operation, from the predatory targeting of vulnerable Hindu families and the abuse of a trusted institution to the application of sexual violence as a tool of coercion, was permeated with religious malice. It reveals a pattern where conversion is not sought through theological persuasion but is instead imposed through a regime of terror specifically engineered to break the will of Hindu children. The Sasaram case, therefore, stands as a grave testament to a particular form of religious hatred that seeks not just to convert Hindu individuals but to annihilate their original religious consciousness through calculated and brutal means. Disclaimer: It is necessary to clarify that while the formal investigation and subsequent reporting of the incident at the James English School and affiliated tailoring institute in Sasaram, Bihar, occurred in September 2025, the exact start date of the systematic exploitation and forced conversion activities remains undocumented in public reports. The date selected for this case within the Hinduphobia Tracker is based on the earliest verifiable date of official action—specifically, the disappearance of the teenage girl from Gaya district on August 27, 2025, which triggered the inquiry.
Case Status
Unknown
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Christian Extremists
Perpetrators Range
Unknown
Perpetrators Gender
unknown
Sources 
