Hindu woman sexually exploited, abused with casteist slurs and pressured for religious conversion by Muslim man

Case ID : d327172 | Location : Bengaluru, Karnataka, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 18 January, 2026

Case ID : d327172

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

18 January, 2026

Hindu woman sexually exploited, abused with casteist slurs and pressured for religious conversion by Muslim man

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Case Summary

In the BTM Layout area of Bengaluru, Karnataka, a 43-year-old Hindu woman was sexually exploited, abused with casteist slurs and pressured for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Mohammed Haneef. According to reports, the victim had been facing marital discord after her husband secretly sold a private English-medium school that the couple had jointly established, which prompted her to seek external assistance. During this time, she came into contact with the accused, Mohammed Haneef, who presented himself as a media executive and CEO of an NGO named Citizen Labour Welfare and Anti-Corruption Committee. He claimed he had influence over senior officials and spiritual figures and assured her that he could help restore the school’s ownership. Over time, he appointed her as the State President of the women’s wing of his NGO, thereby deepening her trust. He also introduced her to a 'Guru', an astrologer from Kerala, persuading her to undertake special rituals to resolve her problems. She repeatedly visited the astrologer’s residence, and during these visits, the accused gave her beverages, which were drugged, leaving her disoriented. He then behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner, made explicit remarks, and subjected her to continued physical and mental harassment. He extracted a total of ₹16 lakh from her under the pretext of ritual expenses and legal intervention, with no progress in recovering the school. The accused later shifted his office to Nayandahalli. When the victim visited his new office to follow up on her case, he continued to behave inappropriately, touched her without consent, and proposed marriage as a solution to her problems. He also pressured her to convert to Islam as a precondition to marriage. However, when the victim refused and confronted him over the money and broken assurances, he abused her using obscene language and humiliated her with caste-based remarks. Subsequently, the victim filed a complaint, and a case was registered at Byatarayanapura police station against Haneef on charges relating to cheating, sexual harassment, pressure for religious conversion and caste abuse. The accused was arrested and was remanded to judicial custody.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been documented under the selected primary category: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the selected secondary category 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 other sub-category selected here is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The second primary category selected here is - Hate speech against Hindus. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem out of inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith, therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu woman was sexually exploited, abused with casteist slurs and pressured for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Mohammed Haneef. The accused systematically groomed the victim by exploiting her vulnerability arising from marital discord and a property dispute. He used deception, authority derived from his NGO position, and claims of spiritual and institutional influence to gain her trust. Firstly, the accused groomed her, drugged her and sexually exploited her on multiple occasions. These exploitations were not random acts of crime; rather, they functioned as religiously motivated tools aimed at humiliating and dominating a Hindu woman because of her faith. The target was not the victim as an individual, but her Hindu identity, as he later pressured her to convert to Islam. The specific focus on her Hindu identity in the commission of these acts highlights the religious hatred underlying the crime, making it a religiously motivated offence. Secondly, the accused attempted to force the Hindu victim to renounce his religion and convert to Islam. The pressure to abandon Hinduism was coercive in nature and framed as a solution to her problems, demonstrating an intent to erase or subordinate her Hindu faith rather than respect her agency. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another was a direct attack on her religious identity and dignity. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act is not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Thirdly, when the victim refused to convert and confronted the accused over the money and broken assurances, he abused her using obscene language and humiliated her with caste-based remarks. It can be argued that a caste-specific slur is aimed at her micro identity of belonging to the Dalit section of the Hindu community and not her Hindu identity itself. However, as far as Abrahamic religions are concerned, the micro identities of caste, region, and language are secondary. It is the religious identity that drives the animosity of the perpetrator against the Hindu victim. In this case, while Haneef caste abuses at the victim, the animosity was driven by his animosity towards Hinduism and Hindus. While the immediate trigger was her refusal to convert, the fact that caste slurs were hurled at the victim by the perpetrator makes it a religiously motivated hate crime against the victim. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. Such acts were not merely personal crimes; they were rooted in a desire to dominate and erase the religious identity of the victim. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim came into contact with the accused. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media, 17 January 2026.