Hindu woman deceived into marriage by Christian family posing as Hindu, forcibly converted, assaulted and harassed

Case ID : aa4b2af | Location : Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 31 December, 2020

Case ID : aa4b2af

Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

31 December, 2020

Hindu woman deceived into marriage by Christian family posing as Hindu, forcibly converted, assaulted and harassed

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Attempting to convert/converting by denigrating Hinduism

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Forced conversion after marriage

Case Summary

In Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman named Shraddha Singh was deceived into marriage by a Christian family posing as Hindus. Following the marriage, she was forcibly converted to Christianity through physical assault and torture. According to news reports, Shraddha Singh married a man named Aman Yadav in 2021. She said that her husband, to woo her into a marriage, had pretended to be a Hindu and hidden the fact that he was a crypto-Christian. Everything appeared normal for three years. Subsequently, her husband and his family started stopping her from performing Hindu religious rituals at home or going to a Hindu temple. In January 2025, when Shraddha asked her mother-in-law for permission to attend the Kumbh Mela, her request was rejected. When her parents attended the Maha Kumbh, Shraddha posted a photo of the event as her status. Her mother-in-law and husband abused her for posting a picture of Hindu deities and threatened to kill her if she did not comply with their demands. Her husband then revealed to her that he and his family members were Christians and that they received money for converting to Christianity. The family also tried to force Shraddha to adopt Christianity, as they would get more money from the missionaries to convert Shraddha. When she refused, her mother-in-law and brother-in-law physically assaulted her and locked her in a room and denied her food for a day. The following day, her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, Sandhya, entered her room and again pressured her to convert. When she refused, they abused her and locked her in the room once more. They then called a Christian priest and forcibly converted her to Christianity. Shraddha subsequently approached the police and filed a complaint against her husband, Aman Yadav, her mother-in-law, her brother-in-law Prem, and her sister-in-law Sandhya. The police acted promptly, registered a case, and began an investigation.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The case has been added as a religiously motivated hate crime under two prime categories of the tracker. The first is- Predatory proselytisation. Under this, the sub-category 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. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. 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. Another primary category selected is - Crimes against Women in relationships and sexual crimes. The first sub-category selected is - Man pretends to be Hindu. 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 sub-category selected is- Forced conversion after marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to Islam begins after marriage. 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. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither parties are required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert to Islam after marriage. 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 situations, there is application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing, however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. The third sub-category relevant under the second prime category selected here is- Attempting to convert/ converting in 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. The other sub-category selected is- Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. In this case, a Hindu woman, Shraddha Singh, was deceived into marrying a man who falsely presented himself as a Hindu but was, in fact, a Christian. This deception was not incidental but deliberate, serving a clear religious motive: to entrap her under false pretences and subsequently coerce her into abandoning her faith. The calculated concealment of religious identity and subsequent acts of intimidation and forced conversion make this case a textbook example of a religiously motivated hate crime. The hate motive is evident from the targeted nature of the deception and the subsequent systematic suppression of the victim’s Hindu identity. After marriage, Shraddha was stopped from performing Hindu rituals and attending temples. When she resisted, she faced verbal abuse, physical assault, confinement, and starvation. Eventually, she was forcibly converted by a Christian priest—an act that directly violated her constitutional right to religious freedom. What makes this case particularly egregious is the use of deception not merely to facilitate a relationship, but to manipulate and undermine the victim's faith. The accused and his family allegedly admitted to receiving money from Christian missionary networks for conversions—highlighting a deeper, systemic network incentivising such predatory behaviour. This turns the case from an instance of domestic abuse into one of communal and ideological targeting. This incident fits into a broader pattern, wherein Hindu individuals—often women or those economically vulnerable—are targeted for conversion through a combination of deceit, financial inducement, and coercion. Such acts are not isolated but appear to stem from a theology or worldview that regards non-adherents as inferior or in need of 'saving,' thus justifying manipulative and violent tactics. The suppression of her Hindu practices, forced confinement, and eventual coerced conversion demonstrate a clear attempt to erase her religious identity. This is not just a personal betrayal but a violation of her dignity and religious autonomy, rooted in a communal bias. It also reflects the broader pattern of religiously motivated coercion that disproportionately affects Hindus in certain regions. Given these facts, this incident clearly meets the criteria of a hate crime—it was motivated by animus towards the Hindu faith and executed with the intent to forcibly eliminate that identity through conversion. Therefore, it is being added to the Hate Crime Database as an act of targeted religious persecution. Disclaimer: Media reports state that the victim’s ordeal began when she met the accused in 2021, though no exact date or month is provided. To document this case, we have used an indicative date—January 1, 2021—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on May 20, 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.