Muslim contractor of Maharashtra pretends to be a Hindu to lure Hindu woman, forcibly marries her after converting her
Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India 
23 April, 2024
Case Summary
In Maharashtra's Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, a Muslim building contractor forcibly converted a female engineer for marriage, triggering tensions in the city. Following the woman's allegations, three individuals, Taher Pathan, Tayyab Shabbir Pathan and Ayesha Baher Pathan, were formally charged at the police station in connection with the case. The woman accused Taher Pathan of concealing his identity and marital status to subject her to abuse and coerce her into conversion on February 11, 2024. She was pressured into prayers, religious attire, and a fraudulent marriage ceremony. The accused also subjected her to violence.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
Two distinct elements in this particular case demonstrate that the Muslim perpetrator committed the crime while harbouring a bias against the Hindu faith. The first factor is that the accused pretended to be a Hindu to deceive her. 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. The second component in this case which makes it worthy of being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime is that the Muslim accused pressured the Hindu victim to convert to Islam and follow Islamic practices like wearing a hijab and reading namaz. 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. The relationship in such cases is mostly 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. In such cases, 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. Since this case meets two specific components of religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindu women, this case has been documented here.
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
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
