Hindu youth kidnapped, assaulted, and forced to convert by relatives of his Muslim wife

Case ID : 99587ce | Location : Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 12 September, 2025

Case ID : 99587ce

Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

12 September, 2025

Hindu youth kidnapped, assaulted, and forced to convert by relatives of his Muslim wife

Men attacked for being associated with non-Hindu women

Attacked by non-Hindu partner or/and her family

Forced to convert after marriage

Case Summary

A Hindu youth named Sarwan Vishwakarma was kidnapped and assaulted in Bhopal’s Kolar area on 13 September 2025 by the relatives of his Muslim wife, Hazra Bi (Nisha). The perpetrators, identified as Hazra’s father Kalamuddin, her uncle Ghafoor, and their accomplices Azharuddin and Rehman, attempted to force Sarwan to convert to Islam. Sarwan, aged 27 and originally from Rampura village in Vidisha district, had married Hazra six months earlier in an Arya Samaj temple in Durg, Chhattisgarh, after the couple eloped. Since then, they had been living together in the Kolar area of Bhopal. Hazra’s family had been searching for her since the marriage. On the night of 13 September, Sarwan was returning home from work when the accused abducted him, physically assaulted him, and pressured him to renounce his faith. The kidnappers also planned to transport Hazra and Sarwan separately to Chhatarpur, but Sarwan managed to escape en route and returned to his home in Vidisha. The following day, he approached members of a Hindu organisation, who helped him bring the matter before the police. Hazra was later rescued safely from Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh. However, Sarwan revealed that despite his repeated attempts, the Kolar police initially refused to act on his complaint for three days. Only after intervention did Station House Officer Sanjay Soni confirm that a case had been registered and a search for the accused was underway.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category under this is: Men attacked for being associated with non-Hindu women. The first subcategory under this is: Attacked by non-Hindu partner or/and her family. When Hindu men are in a relationship with non-Hindu women, there are cases where the man is forced to convert his religion and upon his refusal to do so, the partner or/and her family attacks the victim. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu woman known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu woman or her family starts forcing/pressurizing the Hindu man to convert. In some of these cases, the association could be non-consensual as well or, the religious identity of the non-Hindu woman could be previously unknown to the Hindu victim. In such cases, the Hindu man is first forced/pressurized to change his religion by the non-Hindu woman or her family. The force/pressure could involve threats. The trigger for directing violence against the Hindu man is in these cases his refusal to comply and change his religion under threat and/or force. In other cases that have been documented, it is also seen that the Hindu partner is assaulted by the non-Hindu woman or her family simply for his relationship with the non-Hindu woman and by virtue of him following the Hindu faith and not the religion of the non-Hindu woman. In such cases, the relationship is consensual in most cases and the religion of both partners is known to the other. Often, in such cases, there is no direct force/pressure to convert either, however, the attack is a result of the Hindu man being in a relationship with the non-Hindu partner and not following her religion/following Hinduism specifically. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. The second subcategory under this is: Forced to convert after marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu woman marries a Hindu man and the force/pressure against the Hindu man to convert to Islam begins after marriage. In such cases, the marriage is consensual in most cases and often, there is no element of the non-Hindu woman hiding her religious identity. 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 woman starts to pressure the Hindu man to convert to Islam after marriage. In such cases, there is application of force/pressure by the perpetrator, including, denial of the man’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the man is forced/pressured to convert include forcing/pressurizing the man to involuntarily consume beef, pressurizing/forcing to read the Kalma, forced circumcision, forced to go to the mosque, etc. There are several instances where after marriage, the man 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. In this case, the relationship was consensual, and the man and woman were with each other, knowing each other’s identity fully well. However, in the Islamic faith, a marriage is deemed illegitimate if the non-Muslim partner does not convert to Islam. For those who practice the faith, when their daughter marries a Hindu man without the man converting to Islam, the difference in religions followed becomes the main point of disapproval for the family of the Muslim woman. Because of the ingrained element of religious supremacy in Islam, the perpetrator's family believes that such interfaith relationships diminish the family’s ‘honour’. In this case, also, the inherent animosity for the Hindu religion prompted the family of the Muslim girl to harass the Hindu man. The manner in which this crime unfolded reveals the targeted nature of hostility against him. He was assaulted, kidnapped, and directly ordered to abandon his faith and adopt Islam. His refusal to convert was the precise trigger for violence. This places the case firmly within the category of men attacked for being associated with non-Hindu women, specifically under the subcategory of being attacked by the non-Hindu partner’s family and forced to convert after marriage. The perpetrators did not merely object to the relationship in familial or social terms; they weaponised religion as the instrument of coercion. By insisting that Sarwan could only remain married to Hazra if he surrendered his Hindu identity, the attackers revealed a motivation rooted in religious exclusivism rather than personal or cultural dispute. Sarwan’s situation further underscores how being a Hindu man married to a Muslim woman exposed him to mortal danger. His Hindu faith marked him as an outsider in his wife’s family and community, and it was this identity that rendered him vulnerable to abduction and forced conversion attempts. The family’s plan to transport both Hazra and Sarwan separately across districts shows premeditation and the intent to isolate him in a position where compliance could be extracted. His escape was not a result of police intervention but of his own quick thinking and, later, the assistance of Hindu organisations, which points to systemic negligence. The Kolar police’s initial refusal to register his complaint for three consecutive days further compounds the injustice and illustrates the institutional apathy often faced by Hindu victims of religiously motivated violence. This incident qualifies unequivocally as a hate crime because the violence was executed with religious motivation. Sarwan was not attacked randomly, nor was he a casualty of a neutral domestic quarrel. He was targeted as a Hindu, threatened to abandon his religion, and assaulted for his refusal to do so. His marriage placed him in a vulnerable position where his Hindu identity became the focal point of hostility. It is not the marriage itself that was intolerable to the perpetrators, but the persistence of Hindu belief within it. The demand for conversion, the physical assault, and the calculated abduction demonstrate a pattern of crimes where Hindu men who form relationships with non-Hindu women face not only familial opposition but also existential threats to their religious freedom and bodily security. By documenting this case, the Hinduphobia Tracker records an important instance where religious identity alone determined the victimisation of a Hindu individual. It evidences how interfaith relationships can become grounds for coercion when one community refuses to accept coexistence without religious submission. It also highlights the ongoing vulnerability of Hindu men in such contexts, where their very survival may be contingent upon abandoning their ancestral faith. In Sarwan’s case, his decision to remain Hindu placed him at the edge of violence, and only his narrow escape prevented the attack from resulting in far graver consequences.