Muslim gangster of Uttar Pradesh harasses Hindu girl to marry him and convert to Islam, implicates victim's father in false rape case to pressure her to convert to Islam
Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
29 June, 2023
Case Summary
In Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, Rashid Khan, son of Vakil Hussain and a known gangster with a criminal record, pressurised a Hindu girl to convert to Islam and marry him. The ordeal began nine years ago when Khan met the girl during coaching classes and initiated a one-sided love affair with her, aiming for marriage. However, he soon began pressuring her to convert to Islam. The victim, a resident of the Kotwali area, said that Khan obtained her phone number during coaching and began relentlessly pursuing her, even after she rejected his advances. She changed her phone number to avoid him, but Khan persisted by contacting her father and making threats against him. Khan went as far as fabricating a false rape case against her father, resulting in his imprisonment. With her father jailed, Khan intensified his pressure on the victim to convert to Islam and marry him. The victim lodged a complaint against Khan, prompting the police to take action. On June 30, they arrested Khan and presented him in court, where he was remanded to judicial custody. Rashid Khan faces charges under the Prohibition of Religion Conversion Act 2024, along with other criminal charges. He has a history of criminal activities, including cases of murder and concealing a corpse. Six lawsuits have been filed against him, with three cases each registered in Shahpur and Kotwali police stations.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
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 have 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 and forceful circumcision. 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 in an attempt to make the Hindu victim abandon his/her professed religion and adopt the religion of the perpetrator. In this sub-category, we would include cases where the non-Hindu perpetrator harassed, threatened or coerced the victim to convert, however, the Hindu victim did not convert to another faith. Cases where the victim was converted owing to the harassment and threats 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. This case is a distinct case of religiously motivated hate crime as the Hindu victim was being forced to give up her professed faith and accept Islam. In order to intimidate the victim, the accused went to the extent of trapping the victim's father in a false rape case. As seen in many such cases, the accused employed this arm-twisting tactic, solely to terrorize the victim so that she gives up her professed faith and accepts Islam. The central aim of the perpetrator was to disenfranchise the Hindu man from his professed faith. Since the central motivation here is religion, this case has been included in our Hindu hate tracker.
Victim Details
Total Victim
2
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 1
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 2
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 2
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
