Hindu woman in Bhopal brutally raped and threatened after rejecting advances of Muslim man posing as Hindu
Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India 
5 November, 2025
Case Summary
A Hindu woman was deceived and befriended by a Muslim man in the Koh-e-Fiza area of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The 25 year old woman stated that the man, whose real name is Mohammad Tauhid alias Bilal Khan, introduced himself to her as “Dinesh” years ago and created a false identity to gain her trust. He lured her into a friendship by promising to buy a car for her and get it rented out so she could earn money. The woman later discovered that his name and identity were fake, so she cut ties with him and stopped talking to him. After that, the man began harassing her. She said he threatened to kill her husband, forced her to wear a burqa, and tried to take her with him against her will. The woman also stated that the accused twice entered her house and raped her. When she resisted, he threatened her and forced her to continue sexual relations. The woman lived with her husband, who worked in private employment, and she worked at a shop. Due to continuous harassment and threats, she went to the police and filed a complaint. Police registered an FIR and arrested the accused.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory under this is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category under this is: Name changed. Another tertiary category under this is: Raped and/or murdered after Hindu woman finds out real identity. When a non-Hindu man pretends to be a Hindu to deceive a Hindu woman into a relationship, the act is seen as triggered by malafide intentions. In some cases, the woman eventually accepts the man’s original religious identity and converts after the man’s identity is revealed. These cases could be argued as cases of religious brainwashing and a result of the pressure a woman feels after getting into a relationship with a man. The woman, it can be argued, also changed her religious identity because of the stigma she believes she might face if she chooses to walk out of a deceptive relationship. However, for the purpose of documenting hate crimes, the cases in this subcategory are limited to those where there is explicit violence aimed at religious conversion against the wishes of the victim (force-feeding beef, blackmailing with intimate videos, rape on refusal to convert, etc), or if the woman herself complains of the man’s religious deception. In such cases, it is established that the deception of the non-Hindu man had a specific aim of religious conversion or targeting of the victim due to her Hindu religious identity, therefore, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. Another subcategory under this is: Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary category under this is: 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 second primary category in this case is: Predatory proselytisation. The first sub-category 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. The second sub-category 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. The third subcategory under this is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category under this is: Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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. This case has been included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because the operative core of the incident is the targeting of a Hindu woman through religious deception, and the subsequent escalation into sexual violence, coercion and intimidation that carried a clear religious vector. The Muslim perpetrator constructed an entirely false Hindu identity and inserted himself into her life through this fabricated persona. In India, names are not incidental descriptors. They convey community, ancestry, regional history, and most importantly, religious identity. By selecting a Hindu name and presenting himself as a Hindu man, the accused was not just hiding his personal details. He was exploiting one of the most fundamental cultural structures in Hindu society, which is that romantic partnerships and marriage are almost always conceptualised within the religious community. His false Hindu identity was therefore not a matter of generic fraud or generic cheating. It was a targeted infiltration into the Hindu social space, based specifically on the knowledge that no access would be possible if he revealed his actual Muslim identity at the beginning. The woman’s own testimony becomes essential evidence for classification. She explicitly stated that when she found out he was not Hindu, she cut off all contact. This means that her romantic or personal proximity to him was conditional upon the belief that he was Hindu. The consent for engagement in that relationship was therefore tied to his Hindu identity. Once that identity was exposed to be fake, she withdrew, and the man then escalated to violence and threats. This is a pattern repeatedly recorded in similar cases where the Hindu identity of the victim becomes the fulcrum of coercion. A Hindu woman who refuses to cross the religious boundary of marriage is then punished for refusing to abandon her Hindu religious identity. The subsequent acts of violence by the perpetrator are not separable from this initial deception. He forced his way into her home. He raped her on two separate occasions. After she refused to accept his terms and his religious identity, he tried to enforce religious compliance through force. He threatened to kill her Hindu husband if she did not comply. He demanded that she wear a burqa. The burqa is not an item of ordinary clothing. It is a religious symbol of Islamic female identity. The demand that she wear it was a demand for visible, public, religious surrender. He was not merely trying to continue a relationship. He was trying to forcibly re-engineer her religious identity in a way that would make her Muslim in practice, in dress, in space, and in marital structure. This is the point where the crime crosses far beyond conventional sexual assault and enters the domain of predatory proselytisation. The perpetrator was attempting to force the abandonment of Hindu identity and enforce an Islamic identity. In that process, we see all three axes of religiously motivated crime. There is the initial deception through the Hindu disguise. There is the grooming, inducement and manipulation through promises of wealth and opportunity. There is the subsequent coercion and harassment, including violent sexual domination, to compel conversion. In each stage, the Hindu identity of the woman was not incidental. It was the foundation of why the deception was necessary, why the force was applied, and why religious symbols such as the burqa were used as instruments of subordination. This case is therefore documented because the violence inflicted on the Hindu woman was entangled with her religious identity from the beginning, and the purpose of the violence was not merely physical exploitation. It was the erasure of Hindu identity, followed by forced absorption into a Muslim identity. The sexual assaults, the threats, the forced religious symbolism, and the initial deception combined to form a unified sequence of harm grounded in religious animus. This is why the offence meets the threshold of a Hinduphobia centric hate crime in this Tracker. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date on which the ordeal of the victim started. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
