Minor Hindu girl raped at gunpoint; she and her family forced to convert to Islam by Muslim man in Moradabad

Case ID : d327043 | Location : Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 11 January, 2025

Case ID : d327043

Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

11 January, 2025

Minor Hindu girl raped at gunpoint; she and her family forced to convert to Islam by Muslim man in Moradabad

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Conversion of minor

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Case Summary

In Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, a 16-year-old Hindu girl was raped at gunpoint and was forced to convert to Islam by a Muslim man named Zubair. Even the girl's entire family was offered inducements and was pressured to adopt Islam. The Hinduphobia Tracker contacted the Majhola police in this case. They confirmed that the victim is a Hindu girl. According to media reports, this incident came to light when the victim's father filed a complaint against Zubair and his accomplices. The minor victim revealed that Zubair was accompanied by his sisters in his crime. He first raped the girl at gunpoint and then made an obscene video of the rape. Following this, he kept sexually exploiting her for almost a year by using the obscene video to blackmail her. The victim's father also stated that Zubair first trapped his wife in a love affair and then threatened and raped his minor daughter. The father says Zubair pressured the entire family to convert to Islam. He even offered them 20 lakh rupees from mosque donations if they converted along with their family. The minor girl's mother also supported Zubair in his crime. The girl's father further stated that the accused even entered his home, physically assaulted him, threatened to kill him, and stole approximately 20 lakh rupees in cash, jewellery, and other items. Following the complaint from the Hindu girl's father, the police took action. A case was registered against six people, including the main accused, Zubair and the victim's mother, under sections including rape, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, criminal intimidation, and blackmail. Providing information on the matter, the Superintendent of Police stated that the main accused, Zubair, and the victim's mother had been arrested. The search for the other four accused was ongoing.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories selected are- 'Rape and sexual assault/harassment' and 'Conversion of minor'. 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 proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other 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. The other subcategory selected is- Conversion/attempts to convert by inducement. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. This case is a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, as a minor Hindu girl and her family were targeted for forced religious conversion, and the girl was also subjected to rape at the hands of the Muslim perpetrator. Firstly, the Hindu girl was raped at gunpoint, and an obscene video of her was recorded. In this case, rape served more than sexual gratification; the victim was religiously profiled due to her Hindu identity, then raped with the deliberate intent to humiliate her, break her spirit, and rob her of her dignity. Such religiously motivated rapes targeting Hindu girls constitute a blatant hate crime driven by deep animosity towards the Hindu community. It is crucial to emphasise that the victim was a minor, meaning no element of consent or genuine change of conscience existed from the outset. Minors, owing to their tender age and limited maturity, remain especially vulnerable to manipulation and coercion, lacking the capacity to comprehend the profound, lifelong implications of abandoning their faith for another religion. The Muslim perpetrator deliberately targeted and exploited this vulnerability by raping her at gunpoint, recording obscene videos, and then brandishing them to coerce her conversion to Islam. This blatant use of coercion to enforce religious conversion constituted a textbook act of religious hatred against the innocent Hindu girl, violating her sacred religious autonomy and fundamental rights while striking at the core of her Hindu identity and beliefs. Such hostility towards Hindus marks this as a clear, religiously motivated hate crime. By blackmailing the victim with her obscene videos, the accused sought to shatter her spirit and perpetuate her sexual exploitation over nearly a year, a prolonged torment that underscored his relentless intent to humiliate her repeatedly for her Hindu identity. The severity of this sustained violence revealed the depth of the accused's hatred for Hinduism and the innocent Hindu girl. The Hindu girl's family endured parallel horrors, with the father assaulted and threatened with death, while the entire household faced coercion to convert, their shared Hindu identity making them prime targets for this ruthless campaign of forced conversions. These acts of forced conversion through threats, violence, and coercion stood as irrefutable religiously motivated hate crimes, far removed from any voluntary shift in faith. Even the offer of 20 lakh rupees from mosque funds was no act of goodwill but a cynical tool to prey on the family's economic fragility and strip them of their Hindu roots. After subjecting the girl and her family to rape, blackmail, death threats, and conversion pressure, the perpetrator dangled these inducements as a final gambit to lure them into abandoning Hinduism for Islam. Such predatory enticements to convert Hindus epitomise religiously motivated crimes aimed at stripping Hindus of their native faith. These patterns of predatory proselytisation stem from doctrinal animosity in Abrahamic faiths that cast non-adherents as enemies or inferiors until they submit through conversion. This ingrained hostility fuels hate crimes against Hindus. Therefore, this case has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker's hate crime database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a crime occurs or when the victim's ordeal begins, rather than when media outlets report it. In this case, media reports clearly stated that the victim's ordeal began a year earlier, as she endured constant rape over that period, though the exact start date remained unspecified. The report was published on 12 January 2026. Based on this information, 12 January 2025 has been selected as the indicative incident date, serving as an estimate for the beginning of the victim's ordeal. This tracker acknowledges that multiple individuals were named as accused in this case, including the primary accused, Zubair, his sisters, and the victim's mother. For documentation purposes, the religion of the perpetrators has been recorded as Muslim since the primary accused, Zubair and his sisters are confirmed to be Muslim. The religious identity of the victim's mother has not been independently verified at the time of documentation. However, given that they were all complicit in the acts of rape, blackmail, coercion, and forced conversion directed toward the minor Hindu victim and her family, the case is recorded under a single perpetrator religion for consistency in categorisation. This approach ensures clarity in data representation without overlooking the involvement of all 6 accused individuals. Although media reports state that the minor Hindu girl and her entire family were targeted for forced religious conversion in this case, they did not specify the total number of family members affected. The reports explicitly identified only two individuals: the victim herself and her father. For documentation purposes, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the victim count as two (2), adopting a conservative estimate based on verified details to ensure accuracy in data representation.