Hindu transgender woman pressured to convert to Islam and issued death threats by Muslim transgenders in Bijnor

Case ID : d326f20 | Location : Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 7 January, 2026

Case ID : d326f20

Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, India

7 January, 2026

Hindu transgender woman pressured to convert to Islam and issued death threats by Muslim transgenders in Bijnor

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu transgender woman named Muskan Chaudhary faced pressure to convert to Islam from two Muslim transgender women, namely, Rani alias Liaqat and Lata alias Tahseen. The victim was also issued death threats by the Muslim perpetrators. This incident came to light when the victim, along with support from her fellow transgender accomplices, filed a complaint against the Muslim transgender individuals. While speaking to the media, the victim, Muskan Chaudhary, stated that Rani alias Liaqat and Lata alias Tahseen, both from Bijnor, harassed her. She also stated that she faced pressure to convert from Hinduism to Islam and received threats of abdication if she did not comply. The Muslim accused also employed thugs and bouncers to intimidate the victim, and also filed numerous false cases against her and even issued death threats. According to Muskan, this marked the first time the throne (Gaddi), meaning power and authority in the Hijra transgender community, was passed to a Hindu, which angered the Muslim faction. Muskan explained that the villages in the Himpur police station area fell under her jurisdiction, but the Muslim accused still visited there to offer congratulations, a religious tradition among Indian transgenders, and collect money from people. The Hindu victim sought help and justice from the police and administration in this matter. Several other Hindu transgender people, including Rajkumari, Shivani, Riya, Sonam, Pooja, Resham, and Sana, accompanied her during her visit to the police station and protested the attempted forced conversion and intimidation she faced. After receiving the victim's complaint, the police began an investigation into this matter.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected 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. This case constitutes a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, as the Muslim perpetrators pressured the Hindu transgender woman, Muskan Chaudhary, to convert to Islam, targeting her explicitly for her Hindu identity. Her religious affiliation served as the central reason for the torment inflicted upon her, transforming personal suffering into a deliberate assault on her faith. Conversion under such circumstances, driven not by genuine personal conviction but by external coercion and harassment, strips victims of their spiritual autonomy and equates to a calculated effort to eradicate the victim's Hindu identity. The aggressive tactics employed by the perpetrators to force Muskan to abandon Hinduism reveal a profound contempt for her religious beliefs, violating her fundamental right to practise her faith freely. This pattern of intimidation exemplifies attempted forced conversion, a hallmark of religiously motivated crimes that seek to undermine and erase the victim's religious identity through coercion and intimidation. The threats and intimidation directed at Muskan, who held the gaddi, a position of leadership and authority within India's indigenous Hijra transgender community, further underscore the anti-Hindu hostility at play. Her unprecedented ascent as the first Hindu transgender woman to claim this role provoked outrage among the Muslim transgender perpetrators, prompting them to demand she relinquish her position or convert to Islam. This ultimatum exposed their deep-seated animosity towards her Hindu identity, intertwining religious prejudice with communal power struggles. The perpetrators escalated their coercion by deploying goons and bouncers to terrorise the Hindu victim, deploying physical enforcers to break her resolve and compel religious submission. Such armed intimidation not only breaches the victim's right to religious freedom but also constitutes a grave insult to Hinduism. This orchestrated campaign of fear and aggression marks a textbook case of anti-Hindu hate crime fuelled by religious enmity. Furthermore, the Muslim perpetrators also filed numerous false cases against Muskan Chaudhary, weaponising the legal system as a tool to break her resolve and compel her conversion to Islam. This calculated misuse of judicial processes inflicted relentless harassment, financial strain, and emotional torment, all orchestrated to punish her for clinging to her Hindu identity. Such tactics reveal a profound religious animosity, where the perpetrators viewed her faith not merely as a personal choice but as an intolerable defiance demanding systematic eradication. By entangling false accusations with prior threats and intimidation, they constructed a multi-pronged assault aimed at stripping her religious autonomy, thereby amplifying the hate crime's severity. Such instances of predatory proselytisation stem from inherent hostility towards the victims' professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to their faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert, making it a religiously motivated crime against Hindus. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the dates of incidents based on when the crime occurs rather than when it is reported by the media. However, in this current case, media reports have not specified the exact date when the victim's suffering began, that is, when she was first targeted for forced conversion. Hence, the date when the media report was published, 8th January 2026, is being selected as the indicative date of the incident. This date is recorded for documentation purposes only.