Hindu women forced to remove sindoor, bindi and bangles, lured with money for conversion to Christianity

Case ID : a0490da | Location : Maihar, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 25 October, 2025

Case ID : a0490da

Maihar, Madhya Pradesh, India

25 October, 2025

Hindu women forced to remove sindoor, bindi and bangles, lured with money for conversion to Christianity

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Attempting to convert/converting by denigrating Hinduism

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A large-scale religious conversion racket was exposed in Maihar, Madhya Pradesh, where around 50 Hindu women were confined in a closed room and coerced into converting to Christianity. The accused, identified as Laxmi Sharma and Savita Vishwakarma, lured the women with money and promises of housing while pressuring them to abandon their Hindu faith. Acting on a complaint, the police arrested five individuals, including two women, at the scene. According to the victim, 32-year-old Jyoti Ahirwar, she was called to Laxmi Sharma’s house in Harnampur on the morning of 26 October 2025, where dozens of women had already gathered. The accused instructed them to remove their bangles, bindis, and sindoor, symbols of Hindu identity, and wash their hair in a water tank before praying to “Isa Masih” and “Jesus Godfather.” When several women resisted, they were reportedly assaulted and offered financial incentives to accept Christianity. The cries of the victims drew local residents, who intervened and stopped the act. Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal, including leaders Shyam Tripathi and Mahesh Tiwari, soon arrived and protested at the site. Tiwari stated that similar activities had been occurring for some time, and local people had finally caught the perpetrators. He affirmed that the VHP would continue to oppose such conversions through lawful means. Police recovered a Christian cross from the accused and registered a case under Sections 3 and 5 of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2021, along with relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Maihar CSP Mahendra Singh Chauhan confirmed that an investigation was underway to determine whether the incident was part of an organised conversion network or an isolated case.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory under this is: Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases, therefore, are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. Another subcategory under this is: Attempting to convert/converting by denigrating Hinduism. In several cases, Hindus are converted or an attempt is made to convert Hindus by denigrating their faith, Hinduism. In such cases, the Hindus associate with the non-Hindu perpetrators often by choice and then, the attempt to convert them by insulting their faith, showing the faith down etc begins. An example of this would be a non-Hindu gathering where the Hindus are attending the gathering of their own free will. However, once they attend the gathering, there is an explicit attempt to convert them by abusing their faith and hailing the faith of the perpetrator. The denigration of the Hindu faith is often based on misrepresentation of the Hindu faith, its doctrine and scriptures and insult to espoused traditions if not blatant lies about Hindu beliefs and ways. Such conversions or attempts at conversions are driven by animosity towards the Hindu faith and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. Another 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. This case has been included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because around fifty Hindu women were confined in a closed room and pressured to convert to Christianity through a combination of inducement, deceit, and psychological coercion. The accused exploited the women’s economic vulnerability by offering them money and housing in exchange for renouncing their faith. Such inducements are a well-documented method of predatory proselytisation, where poverty and social marginalisation are manipulated to engineer religious conversion. The promise of financial stability and welfare is not offered as charity but as a transactional condition for rejecting Hinduism. The motive in such cases is not benevolence but religious expansionism, achieved through exploiting economic dependence. Equally grave was the manner in which the accused sought to demean Hinduism and its cultural expressions. The women were instructed to remove their sindoor, bindi, and bangles, symbols of marital sanctity and religious devotion within Hindu tradition. This act was not a casual request but a calculated attempt to strip them of their Hindu identity, both symbolically and spiritually. By forcing them to erase these sacred signs, the perpetrators enacted a ritualised denigration of Hindu womanhood and the domestic-cultural continuity it represents. Such acts convey the implicit message that Hindu symbols are inferior or impure, and that spiritual legitimacy can only be achieved through the acceptance of another faith. When several women resisted, the perpetrators allegedly assaulted them, verbally abused their beliefs, and pressured them to abandon their religion. They were also offered money and promises of housing to entice them into embracing Christianity, turning the entire episode into one of intimidation, degradation, and exploitation of faith under the guise of religious conversion. After coercing the women to abandon their Hindu symbols, they were compelled to wash their hair in a communal water tank, a symbolic act of purification meant to sever their ritual continuity with Hinduism, and ordered to pray to “Isa Masih” and “Jesus Godfather.” This element further illustrates the psychological manipulation at play: to instil shame in their original faith while presenting another as redemptive. The entire process constitutes an act of religious degradation, where the perpetrators denigrate Hindu customs and replace them with those of another religion through deceit and pressure. The case qualifies as a religiously motivated hate crime because the victims were targeted not as individuals but as adherents of Hinduism. Their religious identity was central to the crime, forming both the justification and the objective of the act. The perpetrators used economic inducement as a weapon of control, treating the women’s poverty as a means to spiritually dispossess them. Moreover, by compelling them to symbolically reject their Hindu markers, like sindoor, bangles and bindi, the perpetrators sought to delegitimise Hindu culture itself, implying that its expressions must be erased to attain salvation or dignity. Such incidents are not isolated acts of mischief or misguided evangelism. They are part of a sustained pattern of predatory activity that preys on socio-economic weakness while demeaning Hindu identity. The denigration of Hindu traditions, by commanding the removal of Sindoor, Bindi, and bangles, transforms what might superficially appear as an act of religious persuasion into a targeted act of humiliation against an entire community’s faith and heritage. Therefore, this case is recorded in the Hinduphobia Tracker as a clear example of hate-driven religious coercion, where Hindu women were targeted, degraded, and pressured to forsake their faith through manipulation, insult, and exploitation of their vulnerability. Disclaimer: The number of victims has been recorded as 50, based on reports that around 50 Hindu women were confined and coerced into conversion. The number of perpetrators has been set to 5, corresponding to the five individuals arrested by the police in connection with the incident. Should further verified details emerge, the report will be updated accordingly.