Muslim youth in Bareilly abducts Hindu girl, village head Nargis Khatoon declars her Muslim

Case ID : d1fb729 | Location : Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 13 March, 2024

Case ID : d1fb729

Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India

13 March, 2024

Muslim youth in Bareilly abducts Hindu girl, village head Nargis Khatoon declars her Muslim

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Bareilly district of Uttar Pradesh, a case of religious conversion surfaced involving a female village head accused of converting a Hindu girl to Islam. The incident was reported on March 14, 2024, in the Hafizganj police station area. A complaint was filed by a 'Bajrang Dal' official named Shivsagar against Imtiaz Ansari, accusing him of luring the girl from Delhi and preparing for her conversion. The village head, Nargis Khatoon, and her husband Tasleem forged documents, including a fake residence certificate changing the girl's name to Kumkum Bano and her religion to Muslim. This led to the blocking of the victim's original documents. An FIR was filed against all accused, and an investigation was initiated by the Bareilly Police.

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 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. In this case, the Maulim village head adopted coercion and intimidation tactics to convert the Hindu victim to Islam which is a direct result of their doctrinal and intrinsic animosity against Hinduism. Due to this specific fact, the case fits into the hate tracker's core category of 'predatory proselytization' and qualifies under the subcategory of 'Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion'.