Minor Hindu boy tortured, circumcised and forcibly converted to Islam

Case ID : a0492de | Location : Bengaluru, Karnataka, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 6 January, 2025

Case ID : a0492de

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

6 January, 2025

Minor Hindu boy tortured, circumcised and forcibly converted to Islam

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Case Summary

A minor Hindu youth named Krishna Khosla was deceived, tortured, and forcibly converted to Islam. The victim stated that his father, Rajiv Khosla alias Sai Rizq Shah, and his stepmother deceptively sent him to Bengaluru under the care of a Muslim family, where he was forcibly circumcised and mentally tortured for religious conversion. The victim, a resident of Ghannupur in Amritsar, Punjab, filed a complaint against his father, stepmother, and others, stating that he was forcibly converted to Islam. He stated that his father, known locally as Sai Rizq Shah, had long been associated with several Muslim families and had held the position of Pir Baba (religious preacher) for several years. His father remarried some time ago, and in January 2025, at the insistence of his stepmother, Krishna was sent to Bhatkal in Bengaluru under the pretext of studying and working. Once there, he was placed under the care of a Muslim family, where he was subjected to physical and mental abuse. He was forcibly circumcised, tortured, and made to adopt Islam. Furthermore, in the medical report (where he was circumcised), his name was written as Haider Ali. The victim revealed that his father had sent him to Bhatkal at the behest of his stepmother and later extorted money from the Muslim family with whom he was kept. He said, “My father sent me to Muslims against my will and left me there for the sake of money.” Despite his repeated pleas for help over the phone, his father refused to intervene or help him. The victim endured this torture for months before managing to contact his grandfather, Yashpal Khosla, and telling him about his ordeal. Subsequently, his grandfather contacted his mother, who resides in England, and together they managed to rescue him and bring him back to Amritsar. Following his return, the victim began living with his grandfather, while his father lodged a false kidnapping complaint against them in retaliation. Subsequently, the victim filed a complaint with the Cheharta police station and the Child Care Unit, demanding action against his father, stepmother, and others. He also underwent a medical examination, which confirmed the circumcision and the use of his altered name in documents. He presented this evidence to the police along with his complaint. Assistant Sub-Inspector Babbu Masih of the Cheharta police confirmed that an investigation had been initiated and that further legal action would be taken. Meanwhile, the victim's father, Rajiv Khosla, claimed that his son had fallen into bad company in Amritsar, which was why he was sent to Bhatkal. He further claimed that he was unaware of any such wrongdoing. The case drew attention from Hindu organisations in Punjab, demanding a high-level inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the conversion and the role of those involved.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the first subcategory selected 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. The second sub-category selected here is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being - Conversion of minor. 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 added to the tracker because a minor Hindu youth named Krishna Khosla was deceived, tortured, and forcibly converted to Islam. He was sent to Bhatkal by his father and stepmother to a Muslim family where he was tortured, forcibly circumcised and converted to Islam. Firstly, it is important to note here that the victim filed his complaint with the police and the Child Care Unit. Child Care Unit (CCU) refers to a child protection or welfare division operating under the District Child Protection Unit (DCPU), part of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS). It works with the police and social welfare authorities and handles cases involving minors, especially where there is abuse, neglect, trafficking, or forced religious conversion. Therefore, it is highly likely that the victim was a minor at the time of incident, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrators, including his father, stepmother and the Muslim family, purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Further, since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. Such acts are not merely criminal in nature; they are ideologically charged, revealing religious prejudice and a calculated intent to alter the religious identity of a minor without his volition. Secondly, the victim was mentally and physically tortured in order to make him convert to Islam. The torture was intended to break him down emotionally, physically, and spiritually so that he would submit to Islam. This was not an instance of random abuse; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity, intended to impose religious dominance and erase his Hindu identity. Thirdly, pressuring a Hindu individual to discard his religious faith and embrace another is a direct attack on his religious identity and dignity. It is not a matter of personal choice; it is coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act is not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Fourth, he was forcibly circumcised to mark his coerced transition into Islam. Circumcision, being irreversible, will remain with him forever—an act of permanent mutilation that reflects the fanatical drive of the perpetrators. For them, it was about permanently stamping him with a religious identity against his will. This was not only an abuse of the child’s vulnerability but also an assertion of religious dominance carried out through force and violence. Fifth, even the victim's name was changed and was given a Muslim name, Haidar Ali. This change of identity was not random but a deliberate attempt to erase the victim's previous Hindu identity. It marks the victim's transition and conversion to Islam, and this name change represents the symbolic erasure of his previous Hindu identity. 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. Therefore, religious conversions, even of minors, are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Moreover, the victim’s father claimed to be unaware of his son’s ordeal. However, evidence and the victim’s own statements reveal otherwise. The father had filed a false kidnapping case, and the victim revealed that his father had accepted money in exchange for handing him over and deliberately chose not to help him despite knowing of his torture and conversion. Furthermore, the father himself was a pir (a Muslim spiritual preacher), which strongly indicates his involvement in the organised process of forced conversion and religious indoctrination. 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 he was sent to Bhatkal in January. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—7 January 2025—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of his suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 7 November 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.