Hindu woman pressured to convert to Islam by her husband and his Muslim girlfriend in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh

Case ID : d32727d | Location : Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 21 January, 2025

Case ID : d32727d

Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

21 January, 2025

Hindu woman pressured to convert to Islam by her husband and his Muslim girlfriend in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion after marriage

Case Summary

In Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman named Nita Pal endured forced conversion to Islam by her husband Manish Pal and his Muslim girlfriend Saba Khan. The victim's precious belongings, like jewellery, also fell victim to robbery by the accused. This incident came to light when the victim filed a police complaint. Nita Pal stated that she married Manish Pal approximately seven years ago (2019). They have a five-year-old daughter, Annu Pal. As per the victim, initially, her married life was filled with happiness. However, Nita stated that Manish Pal maintained an illicit relationship with a Muslim woman named Saba Khan for nearly the past year (2025). She also stated that Saba Khan forced Manish to convert to Islam. After that, Manish and Saba began forcing Nita to convert to Islam. The victim also stated that since this affair, Manish Pal harassed her continuously and evicted her from the house. Even while Nita stayed at her parents' home, Saba Khan, her mother Khusnoor, her sister, her brother-in-law, and Manish Pal broke into her wardrobe in her absence and stole all her jewellery. Manish Pal's mother also participated in this incident. Upon returning to her in-laws' home, Nita discovered her jewellery stolen. Manish Pal threatened to sever her from his family because he married Saba Khan. In her complaint, Nita stated that Saba Khan's interference in their family life while Manish's first wife remained alive and no divorce decree existed from a competent court proved illegal. The victim requested the police to take action against Saba Khan and her family under relevant sections of the law to prevent further harm and to ensure Manish Pal's safety. Motigarhpur police station in-charge A K Singh stated that a case was registered based on the complaint, and the police were investigating the matter.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Crimes against women in relationships or other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is- Forced conversion after marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to any Abrahamic faith, like Islam, begins after marriage. 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. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither parties are required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert her religion after marriage. 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 situations, there is application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing, however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. This case stands as a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, where the perpetrators, Muslim woman Saba Khan and the victim's own husband, Manish Pal, forced a devoted Hindu wife, Nita Pal, to abandon her faith and convert to Islam after years of marriage. Nita, a mother enduring betrayal in her own home, faced this coercion not as a personal dispute but as a targeted assault on her Hindu identity by her husband and his illicit partner. Such attempts of forced conversion strip a Hindu individual of their spiritual roots, violate the sacred autonomy every person holds over their beliefs, and impose a foreign faith through intimidation, marking it as deliberate religious hatred aimed at erasing Hindu devotion from everyday lives like Nita's. Forcing a Hindu woman to convert to Islam constituted a religiously motivated hate crime because it directly undermined her religious freedom, trampled her spiritual autonomy, and sought to supplant her lifelong Hindu practices with an alien faith through relentless pressure. This violation inflicted profound trauma on the victim's soul, as Hinduism emphasises personal righteousness and voluntary devotion, making any coerced abandonment a humiliating conquest of her faith. The act dehumanised Nita, treating her Hindu identity as inferior and disposable, driven purely by the perpetrators' bias against her religion. Such acts of attempted forced conversions are clear examples of hate crimes rooted in deep-seated contempt for Hinduism. In this case, the hate crime intensified as Nita suffered not only spiritual assault but also material robbery, with her precious jewellery stolen by Saba Khan, her mother Khusnoor, her sister, brother-in-law, Manish Pal, and even his own mother, compounding her vulnerability as a displaced wife and mother. These thieves ransacked her wardrobe in her absence, stripping her of heirlooms tied to her Hindu wedding and family legacy, which amplified the religious hostility into a full-spectrum attack on her dignity, security, and heritage. The involvement of the Muslim woman's entire family underscored a collective intent to plunder and dominate, making the crime's severity undeniable. It remains crucial to note that while Nita courageously stated her husband and his Muslim girlfriend forced her to convert to Islam, she also mentioned Saba Khan pressuring Manish to convert first. Multiple precedents exist of Muslim women targeting Hindu men for such coercion due to religious identity, yet Manish, as an adult, held full rights to choose his faith or partner. Without his own testimony confirming force, unlike Nita's clear testimony, we cannot classify his situation definitively as forced conversion, even amidst patterns of Hindu men facing similar pressures. Also, Manish emerged as a perpetrator here, actively joining Saba Khan to coerce Nita, so his personal circumstances did not alter the primary hate crime against the Hindu victim, Nita. In summary, this case, where a Hindu wife and mother faced relentless pressure from her husband and his Muslim lover to forsake her faith for Islam, epitomises a religiously motivated hate crime designed to strip Nita Pal of her Hindu identity and replace it with the Islamic faith. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a victim's ordeal begins, rather than when the media reports it. In this case, media reports do not specify the exact date when Nita Pal first faced forced conversion to Islam. Therefore, considering the timeline where Manish Pal met Muslim woman Saba Khan in 2025, and related media reports emerged on 22 January 2026, this case adopts 22 January 2025 as the indicative incident date. This date is recorded for documentation purposes only and to calculate an estimate of the victim's ordeal beginning. In this case, for documentation purposes, the religion of the perpetrators is recorded as Muslim since the primary accused, Saba Khan, confirms as Muslim. The religious identity of the second perpetrator, Manish Pal, is not verified independently through the victim's statements and marriage context. However, given that he actively participated in the acts of coercion, forced conversion, and jewellery theft directed toward the Hindu victim Nita Pal, alongside Saba Khan, the case records under a single perpetrator religion category of Muslim for consistency in data representation. This approach ensures clarity in tracking religiously motivated hate crimes without overlooking the full involvement of both perpetrators. In this case, although Saba Khan's mother, Khusnoor, her sister, her brother-in-law, and Manish Pal's mother also participated in the jewellery theft, Manish Pal and Saba Khan specifically targeted Nita Pal for religious conversion. Hence, since the Hinduphobia Tracker documents hate crimes against Hindus, the perpetrator count records as two, referring to Manish Pal and Saba Khan.