Hindu woman deceived by Muslim man, raped and forced to convert to Islam and marry

Case ID : cb280f9 | Location : Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 30 November, 2025

Case ID : cb280f9

Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India

30 November, 2025

Hindu woman deceived by Muslim man, raped and forced to convert to Islam and marry

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

A Hindu woman was deceived by a Muslim man who attempted to lure her into a fabricated relationship and then subjected her to coercion, violence and religious pressure in the Sirouli police station area of Aonla tehsil, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. The accused, Mohammad Arif, who works as a contractor in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, tried to entrap her by proposing a romantic involvement. When she rejected his advances, he raped her and began pressuring her to abandon her Hindu identity and accept his faith. She stated that he repeatedly forced the idea of marriage upon her and insisted that she convert, turning physically violent when she refused. She further stated that he arranged for men to abduct her, creating an atmosphere of intimidation that left her fearing for her safety. She eventually escaped and made her way to local Hindu community representatives, recounting the abuse and seeking protection. With their assistance, she approached the Sirouli police station, where she filed a written complaint against Mohammad Arif of Shergarh, Bareilly. The police registered an FIR on the basis of her statement and initiated a medical examination. Officers confirmed that further investigation was underway.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first subcategory under this is: Forced conversion before marriage. 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. 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, 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. 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 the situations, 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. The second subcategory under this is: Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary category under this is: Rape and sexual assault/harassment. In our database, we have not added incidents where women have converted to another religion of their free will and no allegations of forced/involuntary conversion have been made. However, there are certain cases of conversion where the consent itself is a result of the brainwashing or grooming of a minor by the non-Hindu perpetrator trying to victimise a woman for her Hindu religious identity. The phenomenon of grooming points to non-Hindu perpetrators identifying their Hindu victims’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them over months and sometimes years, to extract the supposed ‘consent’ in order to convert their religion. In most cases of grooming, the victims are minors or the grooming started when the victim was a minor. In other cases of grooming, the non-Hindu perpetrator brainwashes and grooms a minor victim to extract their trust and then proceeds to rape them repeatedly with the intent of converting them to their faith. It is pertinent to understand here that when the victim is a minor, the ‘consent’ to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult itself is redundant – addressed by POCSO. While every case of conversion of a minor and incidents of establishing a physical relationship with a minor by an adult is a crime, for the purpose of this database, a case would be considered a hate crime only if there is a distinct religious angle to the grooming. For example, in the UK, if a Hindu minor is targeted by Pakistani grooming gangs, it would be considered a hate crime because the victims are specifically targeted owing to their non-Muslim religious identity with the perpetrators being Muslim. In other cases, if a Hindu minor is brainwashed into entering a physical relationship with the non-Hindu adult perpetrator and the family alleges grooming/brainwashing of the minor to convert her religion, it would form a part of this database. If the victim is a Hindu adult, the case would form a part of this database only if the victim herself says that she was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. However, if the victim is deceased (murdered or otherwise), the case would form a part of this database if her family/friends provided testimony that the victim was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. Since these crimes have a distinct religious angle where the victim is being targeted owing to her Hindu religious identity, these cases are considered a hate crime. This case has been added to the tracker because the victim’s own statement shows that the violence she faced was inseparable from the religious pressure imposed upon her. The accused did not merely pursue an illicit relationship but used coercion, sexual violence and intimidation to push her toward abandoning her Hindu identity. Her testimony makes it clear that the abuse was not limited to interpersonal aggression but was directly tied to demands that she marry him and accept his religion. This alignment of sexual assault with forced religious pressure is central to the category of crimes where conversion becomes a tool of domination rather than a matter of personal choice. The case indicates a pattern where the accused sought to subordinate the victim by eroding her religious autonomy. His insistence that she convert, his threats, and his physical violence when she resisted all point to a deliberate effort to reshape her identity in accordance with his expectations. The attempt to abduct her through hired men further demonstrates an organised exertion of control intended to silence resistance. These actions extend beyond individual misconduct and reveal a targeted attack on her as a Hindu woman whose refusal to convert became the trigger for escalating violence. The case also involves sexual assault deployed in a manner aligned with the broader pattern described in the forced conversion category. When rape is used alongside pressure to change faith, the crime takes on a distinct character in which bodily harm is instrumentalised to fracture the victim’s religious selfhood. Her allegation that the assault followed her refusal to accept his demands strengthens the conclusion that the violence was not arbitrary but aimed at compelling religious submission. Furthermore, the complaint describes a sequence that matches established indicators of religiously motivated coercion: pressure to marry under his terms, insistence on conversion as a condition of the relationship and intimidation when she resisted. These are recurring features in cases where Hindu women are targeted by non-Hindu men seeking to impose religious conformity. The presence of community intervention and the immediate filing of an FIR reinforce that the complaint is grounded in specific, articulated harms tied to her identity. Taken together, the deception, coercion, sexual assault and pressure to convert establish a clear religious motive. This positioning of a Hindu woman as a target for control and forced assimilation is why the incident fits the definition of a hate crime against Hindus and qualifies for documentation within this tracker. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date on which the ordeal of the victim started. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media.