Hindu teacher assaulted by her Muslim colleagues for resisting forced conversion, students also brainwashed to convert to Islam

Case ID : cb280c8 | Location : Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 21 March, 2023

Case ID : cb280c8

Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, India

21 March, 2023

Hindu teacher assaulted by her Muslim colleagues for resisting forced conversion, students also brainwashed to convert to Islam

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for refusal to convert

Case Summary

A Hindu government school teacher was forced to convert to Islam by her Muslim colleagues and was assaulted after she opposed religious coercion inside a state-run primary school in Gonda district, Uttar Pradesh. The case came to light after a court ordered the police to register an FIR, as earlier complaints made by the victim in 2023 and 2024 had not resulted in action. The 35-year-old assistant teacher stated that while she was posted at the Primary School in Chishtipur in 2023. Here, headmistress Tazeen Khan, assistant teacher Fareen Khan, shiksha mitra Safia Khatoon, Rashid Khan, Tazeen’s husband Nafees Khan and Ejaz Ahmad had repeatedly pressured her, other teachers, staff, and students to adopt Islam. She said Islamic teachings had been introduced forcibly, and the school had been turned into a madrasa in practice. She also stated that two staff members from another institution, Officer Hussain and Amna Khatoon, had supported these activities. According to her statement, matters had escalated on 22 March 2023 when she refused to convert. She said she had been beaten, threatened with death, and her clothes had been torn. She had fled the area and had reached a nearby village, where a woman had helped her with clothes. She had submitted a written complaint to the Dehat Kotwali police station on 28 March 2023 and later approached the Superintendent of Police, but no inquiry had followed. Distressed by the circumstances, she had secured a transfer to Mathura on 28 June 2023. With no progress from the police, she had petitioned the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow Bench. On 7 February 2025, the court had directed her to file an application under Section 156(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code before the lower court. Acting on this order, the magistrate had instructed the Dehat Kotwali police to register a case. Police then filed an FIR under six sections covering molestation, assault and forced religious conversion against nine Muslims, including headmistress Tazeen Khan. The investigation was assigned to Sub Inspector Kamal Shankar Chaturvedi, who stated that efforts to contact the victim were ongoing.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The first subcategory under this 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. 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 subcategory under this is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories under this are: 'Conversion of Minor' and 'Pattern of Targeting Hindus'. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytisation, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. Another primary category in this case is: Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory under this is: Attacked for refusal to convert. When there is pressure, threat or coercion employed upon the Hindu victim to convert to a different religion, in several cases, the victim refuses to succumb to the pressure/threats. Once the victim refuses, the perpetrator proceeds to attack/assault the victim owing to his/her refusal to convert. In such cases, the pressure/threat/intimidation/coercion/violence itself is driven by animosity towards the victim’s Hindu faith. The violence then is another hate crime driven by the victim’s refusal to abandon his professed faith, Hinduism, and convert to the religion of a non-Hindu perpetrator. Since the victim’s faith is at the heart of the pressure to convert and the ensuing violence towards the victim, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because it shows a clear pattern of religious coercion, intimidation and physical violence directed at a Hindu teacher with the aim of forcing her to abandon her religion. The conduct described by the victim was not an isolated disagreement inside a workplace but a sustained attempt to pressure a Hindu employee and minor Hindu students to adopt Islam. This placed the case firmly within the category of predatory proselytisation, where harassment and coercion are used to push a Hindu individual towards conversion. The victim stated that she was repeatedly instructed to accept a religion she did not follow and that Islamic teachings were introduced inside a government school without consent. Turning a state-run institution into a space for religious conversion created an atmosphere where the teacher’s Hindu identity became the basis for her harassment. These actions matched the definition of coercive proselytisation, where pressure, intimidation and threats are used to influence the religious decision of a Hindu individual. The victim described humiliation, physical assault and threats to her life when she refused to convert, all of which indicated that her resistance triggered the violence. This case is also an example of religious harassment through coercion because the behaviour she described included repeated attempts to overpower her personal choices, demean her in front of others and frighten her into compliance. In several documented cases, Hindu victims are targeted in similar ways because perpetrators hold hostility toward Hindu beliefs and use intimidation to compel abandonment of their native faith. The victim’s experience was consistent with this pattern. The victim also stated that the pressure was not only on herself but also on minor Hindu students, suggesting an attempt to use the school setting to shape religious identity. That kind of environment often involves manipulation, subtle indoctrination and misuse of authority, which are recognised forms of predatory proselytisation. The fact that the victims of this incident are also minors makes the predatory nature of the crime even clearer. In the case of minors, the element of consent and genuine change of conscience is missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrators purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the minor victims. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus. Another crucial reason for including this case in the tracker is the escalation of violence following the victim's refusal to convert. The assault she endured was deliberate, directly resulting from her rejection of another religion (Islam). Her clothes were torn, and she faced death threats. Such instances, where the target is a Hindu woman, and the attack stems specifically from refusal to convert, unequivocally demonstrate the crime's religiously motivated nature. The case also reflected a pattern of targeting Hindus, especially when the victim stated that the pressure to convert to Islam extended to other Hindu colleagues and children. This formed part of a wider behaviour where non-Hindu authority figures, in this case, Muslims, used their positions to influence or intimidate Hindu individuals into adopting their faith, Islam. Such misuse of trust and authority aligns with the documented forms of grooming, manipulation and indoctrination used to undermine Hindu identity. For these reasons, the incident is categorised as a hate crime against Hindus. The pressure to convert, the threats, the physical assault and the misuse of institutional authority were all rooted in animosity toward the victims' Hindu faith. The purpose behind the actions was to weaken the Hindu victim and her Hindu colleagues and students' connection to their own religion and force allegiance to Islam. The violence then became a further expression of this hostility. Since this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the date of an incident based on when the crime occurred rather than the date it is reported by the media. However, in this particular case, the media reports do not specify the exact date on which the crime began. They only mention the date of 22 March 2023, when the victim refused to convert to Islam. Therefore, for the purpose of documentation and consistency, the earliest date mentioned—22 March 2023—is being recorded as the indicative date of the incident. The number of victims has been recorded as 1, as the Hindu assistant teacher was the only individual directly identified and targeted in the documented assault and coercion. Although the complaint mentioned pressure on other staff and students, the exact number of those affected is unknown. The Hinduphobia Tracker is therefore using a conservative figure of one victim for accurate and responsible documentation.