Hindu woman pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man and his friend in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh

Case ID : a0493f4 | Location : Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 2 November, 2025

Case ID : a0493f4

Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India

2 November, 2025

Hindu woman pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man and his friend in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Case Summary

A Hindu woman was lured by a Muslim man and forced to convert to Islam in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh, where the accused and his friend were caught inside the district hospital after attempting to coerce her. The incident took place on the evening of 13 November 2025 within the premises of the Khandwa District Hospital, falling under the Moghat Road police station area. The main accused, identified as Sahil, along with his friend Faizan, was detained by security personnel and local residents after suspicious behaviour led to intervention. According to reports, the 20-year-old Hindu woman worked at a shop in Jalebi Chowk, Khandwa. Around ten days earlier, she had gone to the district hospital to visit an injured relative when she first came in contact with Sahil, who had accompanied a Muslim girl visiting another patient. Later, through a mutual acquaintance, Sahil obtained the woman’s phone number and began contacting her. During their interactions, Sahil told her that he liked her, wanted to marry her, and that she would have to embrace Islam to do so. The woman refused, stating that she had no such intention. On 13 November 2025, she visited the district hospital again with a male colleague to help him obtain his grandmother’s death certificate. When her colleague briefly stepped out, Sahil and Faizan approached her and began pressuring her to accompany them. They told her that she must undergo religious conversion. When she attempted to leave, the accused followed her and grabbed her hand, trying to stop her. The woman managed to break free and called her co-worker for help, who rushed back as she narrated the ordeal. By this time, the hospital security guard, who had already grown suspicious of the two men, intervened and questioned the woman. Seeing her crying, he sought help from nearby people, and together they caught both men before handing them over to the police. Following the complaint lodged by the woman, the Moghat Road police registered a case under the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act and the Atrocities Act against Sahil and Faizan for attempting religious conversion through deceit and coercion. TI Dhiresh Dharwal, the investigating officer, confirmed that both accused were taken into custody and would be produced before the court after interrogation. The police initiated a detailed investigation to determine whether the accused were involved in similar cases of targeted religious conversion. During police questioning, Sahil denied the allegations, claiming that the woman was a friend of his fiancée. He stated that he and Faizan visited the dargah (shrine) inside the hospital regularly to offer prayers and that the woman had called him to meet her there. He further claimed that they met near the shrine and later went upstairs to talk, where the security guard confronted them and forced them to leave. According to Sahil, the misunderstanding led to false accusations being made against him under pressure.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category under this is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory under this is: Forced conversion before marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. 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, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. 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 the situations, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurizing the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. This case has been added to the tracker as it illustrates the dynamics of religiously motivated coercion targeting Hindu women within interpersonal relationships, where the attempt to enforce conversion precedes or accompanies expressions of romantic interest. The incident in Khandwa district, Madhya Pradesh, involves a Hindu woman who was pressured by a Muslim man, Sahil, and his associate, Faizan, to convert to Islam after being lured into communication under the pretext of friendship and affection. The structure of this case aligns with a growing pattern in which religious conversion is used as both a precondition and a mechanism for domination, emotional manipulation, and subjugation of Hindu women. The process in such cases often begins with the construction of emotional dependence through deceit or grooming, where the Hindu woman is first approached in an apparently harmless context. In this instance, contact was initiated under the pretext of hospital assistance, later shifting into persistent calls and emotional pressure. What began as casual communication evolved into coercive insistence that the woman must embrace Islam to marry. This marks the transition from interpersonal interaction to a religiously motivated offence, where the man’s objective moved beyond companionship to ideological control through conversion. The choice of location, a district hospital, further underlines the methodical nature of such incidents. Public spaces are increasingly being used to approach unsuspecting victims, ensuring both opportunity and a veneer of normalcy. When the woman resisted, the accused pursued her, physically restrained her, and continued to impose demands for conversion. Such behaviour combines both psychological coercion and physical intimidation, signifying intent not merely to persuade but to overpower religious agency. The presence of a second accomplice, Faizan, adds to the organised character of the act, suggesting that the incident was not an isolated personal confrontation but a coordinated attempt at religious conversion. The accused’s defence, claiming a misunderstanding and portraying the victim as a family acquaintance, is consistent with common patterns of post-incident rationalisation, where perpetrators attempt to normalise coercion under the pretext of social familiarity. This case, therefore, represents an instance of forced conversion under relational pretext, where the victim’s Hindu identity became the basis of manipulation. The act cannot be viewed as private misconduct alone; it bears the imprint of religious hostility, wherein conversion is weaponised to erase Hindu identity under the guise of emotional or marital connection. Disclaimer: The exact date of the initial contact between the victim and the accused has not been mentioned in the available reports. However, since the incident was stated to have occurred around ten days before 13 November 2025, the date has been recorded as 3 November 2025 for documentation purposes. This estimation aligns with the Hinduphobia Tracker’s standard protocol, which records the earliest verifiable point of interaction relevant to the crime when the precise date is unavailable.