Case Summary

A Hindu woman was lured, sexually exploited and pressured for religious conversion by a Christian man named Abhijeet Williams. The Hinduphobia Tracker accessed the FIR, which stated that the victim first came into contact with the accused, a resident of Kanpur, in 2017 when he introduced himself as an unmarried man and gradually developed a romantic relationship with her. During this time, the accused convinced her that he would marry her and then sexually exploited her under this pretence. On 7 February 2020, he pretended to marry her and performed a staged marriage ritual in the Kanpur court premises, without any form of legal registration, making her believe she was his wife. On this basis, he continued to sexually exploit her over time and defrauded her of approximately ten lakh rupees. During this period, he also treated her with cruelty; he assaulted her and repeatedly pressured her to change her religion to Christianity. When she resisted, he physically assaulted her under the influence of alcohol and issued her death threats. The victim explained that while she was living in Faridabad, her friends and family intervened and rescued her. They brought her to Patna in October 2022 for her safety. However, the accused followed her there and forcibly stayed with her, while continuing to physically, mentally and financially exploit her. In February 2023, he severely assaulted her and her family members in Patna, prompting her to call the police from Shastri Nagar station, who arrived at the scene but attempted only to settle the matter without taking formal legal action. When she decided to formally register a case, the accused became aware of it, stole money from her home, and fled. From 2023 onwards, he repeatedly harassed and threatened her, extorting money from her on multiple occasions by threatening to kill her and her minor daughter. On 6 September 2025, the victim received information that the accused was planning to kidnap her minor daughter. Fearing for their safety, she approached the One Stop Centre at Chajjubagh and consulted the counsellor, who advised her to approach the police. That night, she went to the Shastri Nagar police station and lodged a complaint against the accused. The next morning, the accused arrived at her residence in a suspicious state, tried to force open the door, hurled abuses, and threatened to kill her and her daughter if she refused to open. Hearing the commotion, she phoned her father and also contacted the police control room. The police promptly arrived at the scene and arrested the accused. As of the date of writing this report, the police had registered a case against the accused and sent him to jail.

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Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - Rape and sexual assault/harassment. In our database, we have not added incidents where women have converted to another religion of their free will and no allegations of forced/involuntary conversion have been made. However, there are certain cases of conversion where the consent itself is a result of the brainwashing or grooming of a minor by the non-Hindu perpetrator trying to victimise a woman for her Hindu religious identity. The phenomenon of grooming points to non-Hindu perpetrators identifying their Hindu victims’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them over months and sometimes years, to extract the supposed ‘consent’ in order to convert their religion. In most cases of grooming, the victims are minors or the grooming started when the victim was a minor. In other cases of grooming, the non-Hindu perpetrator brainwashes and grooms a minor victim to extract their trust and then proceeds to rape them repeatedly with the intent of converting them to their faith. It is pertinent to understand here that when the victim is a minor, the ‘consent’ to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult itself is redundant – addressed by POCSO. While every case of conversion of a minor and incidents of establishing a physical relationship with a minor by an adult is a crime, for the purpose of this database, a case would be considered a hate crime only if there is a distinct religious angle to the grooming. For example, in the UK, if a Hindu minor is targeted by Pakistani grooming gangs, it would be considered a hate crime because the victims are specifically targeted owing to their non-Muslim religious identity with the perpetrators being Muslim. In other cases, if a Hindu minor is brainwashed into entering a physical relationship with the non-Hindu adult perpetrator and the family alleges grooming/brainwashing of the minor to convert her religion, it would form a part of this database. If the victim is a Hindu adult, the case would form a part of this database only if the victim herself says that she was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. However, if the victim is deceased (murdered or otherwise), the case would form a part of this database if her family/friends provided testimony that the victim was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. Since these crimes have a distinct religious angle where the victim is being targeted owing to her Hindu religious identity, these cases are considered a hate crime. The other sub-category selected here is - Forced conversion after marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to any Abrahamic faith, like Islam, begins after marriage. 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. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither parties are required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert her religion after marriage. 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 situations, there is application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing, however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. The other sub-category selected here 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu woman was lured, sexually exploited, and pressured for religious conversion by a Christian man named Abhijeet Williams. The Hindu woman was sexually exploited by the Christian perpetrator under the false pretence of marrying her. In fact, he performed a staged marriage ritual in the Kanpur court premises, after which he began sexually exploiting her. This was not a random act of sexual exploitation; it was a targeted assault driven by religious bias, aimed at singling out and violating a Hindu woman because of her religious identity. Such acts of exploitation through manipulation and religious profiling clearly underline the religiously motivated nature of this crime. After marriage, the accused continued exploiting her both financially and sexually. He also treated her with cruelty, assaulting her and repeatedly pressuring her to change her religion to Christianity. This demonstrated that his deception and exploitation were carried out with the calculated intention of achieving his underlying objective of religious conversion. Such actions violated the woman’s fundamental right to practise her own faith and were an attempt to strip her of her Hindu identity. They reflected deep-seated religious hostility and disdain towards Hindus and Hinduism, making this a clear case of a religiously motivated offence. Furthermore, when the victim resisted these demands, she was physically assaulted and given death threats. In such cases, threats or violence serve a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention is to break the victim down emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she can be converted. This is not random violence; it is systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. Using violence as a tool to coerce the conversion of a Hindu woman constitutes a clear case of a religiously motivated crime. This makes the religious intent behind the crime unequivocally clear. In addition to sexual, financial, and physical exploitation, the accused also attempted to kidnap the victim’s minor daughter. This was a deliberate strategy to emotionally manipulate the victim and force her into submission. By threatening the safety of her child, he sought to gain further control and weaken her resistance and to ensure compliance. His stalking of the victim and targeting of her daughter reflect the extreme lengths to which he was willing to go in order to assert dominance and enforce religious conversion, making the hate-driven intent behind the crime even more evident. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim’s professed faith, since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised until they convert. As such, predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents; this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, though it is mentioned that she met the accused in 2017. Media reports state that one of the earliest dates, February 7, 2020, is the date when the victim was tricked into a false marriage in the Kanpur court. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—February 7, 2017—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on September 16, 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported by the media. It is not specified in the records where the victim first came into contact with the accused. However, it is stated that the accused deceitfully performed a staged marriage ritual with her in the Kanpur court premises. Therefore, the place of the incident for this case has been recorded as Kanpur.