Hindu woman deceived by Muslim man posing as Hindu, forced to convert to Islam after marrying as per Hindu rituals
Amroha, Uttar Pradesh, India 
21 February, 2023
Case Summary
In Uttar Pradesh's districts of Amroha and Noida, a Muslim man named Tabish Asghar posed as Vishal Rana to deceive a Hindu woman. Asghar, a resident of Naugawan Sadat in Amroha, deceived the daughter of a businessman from Shahjahanpur. The accused married the victim under Hindu rites and later pressured her to convert to Islam. He also forced her to abort her pregnancy and attempted to murder her. An FIR was registered against Asghar at Gautam Buddh Nagar Sector 113 Police Station. He was arrested and sent to jail. The victim woman had met Tabish Asghar four years prior. He had introduced himself as Vishal Rana, a Rajput, from Naugawan Sadat. As time passed, he gained her trust, and their friendship soon turned into a romantic relationship. On February 22, 2023, Asghar, under his assumed identity, married the Hindu woman in a Hindu ceremony at a banquet hall in Ghaziabad. The event was attended by the family of the victim and Asghar’s brother, Wasim Akhtar, who falsely identified himself as "Vasu Rana." A few days after the wedding, Asghar took the victim to Allahabad High Court under the pretext of registering a court marriage. During the process, the woman discovered the real identity of Tabish Asghar through official documents. Shocked by the revelation, the woman questioned him about his deception. However, Asghar silenced her by claiming her future would be at stake if she pursued the matter further. Later, Asghar started to pressure her to convert to Islam. When she resisted, he forced her to undergo an abortion and threatened to kill her. The woman could not bear the coercion and returned to her parents’ house in Shahjahanpur. Tabish, however, went to the woman and apologised to her. He somehow managed to convince her to return to Noida with him, only to resume his coercive behaviour shortly after. The situation escalated when he attempted to murder her by pushing her off a hill during an outing in Ramnagar. After that, he fled and remained untraceable for several days. The woman lodged a missing person complaint, which led the police to locate him.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the primary category 'Crimes against women in relationship and other sexual crimes'. There are two sub-categories that this case has been documented under. The first sub-category 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. In this case, the Muslim perpetrator not only deceived the Hindu woman by changing his own name, acquiring a Hindu identity, he also married the Hindu woman as per Hindu rituals to convince her of his assumed religious identity. The extent of the deception is also evident from the fact that during the marriage reception, the Muslim perpetrator's brother too assumed a Hindu identity to ensure that the woman did not find out the perpetrator's real identity. The second sub-category this case is being added to 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, after deceiving the Hindu woman with an assumed Hindu identity and marrying her as per Hindu rituals, the Muslim perpetrator started pressuring the Hindu victim to convert to Islam. The pressure to convert and the subsequent threats upon her refusal, indicate a clear motive and proves that the perpetrator was driven by hostility towards the professed faith of the victim. Further, the extent to which the perpetrator went to keep up his fake identity also proves that the victim was specifically targeted for her religious identity with the aim of disenfranchising her from her faith and converting her to Islam. Since the underlying motive of the crime itself was religious in nature, this case is being documented as a hate crime.
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
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
