Minor Hindu girl sexually exploited and pressured for religious conversion by Muslim youth; made to recite kalma and offer namaz
Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India 
1 July, 2025
Case Summary
In Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, a minor Hindu girl was lured, sexually exploited and pressured for religious conversion by a Muslim youth named Osaf Ali Khan. He also forced her to recite Kalma and offer namaz. According to reports, the victim was studying Class 11 at a reputed school in the Shahpura area. The accused, Osaf Ali Khan, frequently visited the area near the victim’s school to meet one of his friends. Using this connection, he gradually befriended the minor victim, gained her trust, and gradually drew her into a relationship. In July 2025, the accused took her out on the pretext of showing her around Bhopal city, but instead he drove her to the secluded Khanugaon area, where he raped her inside his car, and recorded a video of the incident. When she resisted, he pacified her by claiming that he would marry her. Using the video, he blackmailed the victim, threatening to make it viral unless she paid him ₹1 lakh. Fearing social stigma and reputational harm, she arranged and handed over ₹40,000. Despite receiving the money, he continued to harass her, repeatedly pressuring her for sexual exploitation. He continuously harassed her, contacting her through multiple phone numbers after she blocked him, and showing the obscene video to her friends when she refused to comply further. The victim also revealed that the accused had forced her to recite the kalma and perform namaz on multiple occasions and had pressured her to convert to Islam. The victim eventually approached the police with the support of her family and members of a Hindu organisation and filed a complaint against the accused. Police registered a case under the provisions of the POCSO Act, rape, blackmail and the IT Act against the accused and arrested him. They seized his mobile phone for forensic examination and produced him before the district court.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories under it are: Conversion of minor and Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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 the 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 proselytisation, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here 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 second primary category selected here is - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected here is - Forced conversion before marriage, with the tertiary category being - Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices. 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 - Blackmailed to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is blackmailed to convert her religion, owing to her religious identity of being a Hindu. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim, however, there could be cases where the relationship is not consensual and the non-Hindu man starts blackmailing a Hindu woman to convert her religion. In these cases, it is often seen that the Hindu woman is blackmailed with intimate photos and/or videos, threats of harm to her or her family, threats of violence etc. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - Conversion of minor and 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was lured, sexually exploited and pressured for religious conversion by the Muslim accused, Osaf Ali Khan. Firstly, it is important to note here that the victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Additionally, any supposed consent given for a relationship is already considered invalid under the POCSO Act. Such acts are not merely criminal in nature; they are ideologically charged, revealing religious prejudice and a calculated intent to alter the religious identity of a minor without her volition. The use of grooming, where trust is built only to exploit, is an insidious method that exploits the child’s naivety and dependence. Secondly, the accused groomed her, sexually exploited her and recorded obscene videos, which he later used to blackmail her for further sexual exploitation, extortion and religious conversion. This exploitation were not random acts of crime; rather, they functioned as religiously motivated tools aimed at humiliating, and dominating a Hindu girl because of her faith, as he later blackmailed her for conversion. The target was not the victim as an individual, but the her Hindu identity. 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. Thirdly, the accused attempted to force the minor girl to renounce her religion and convert to Islam. 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 was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. In such cases, sexual violence serves a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention was to break the victim down, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she could be converted. This was not random violence; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. The subsequent demand for conversion demonstrated that the abuse was not random but directed at undermining the victim’s Hindu identity. Fourth, the accused also forced the minor Hindu victim to recite the kalma (the Islamic declaration of faith) and to perform namaz (Islamic prayers conducted five times daily). These practices were imposed not as voluntary expressions of belief but as tools designed to alienate her gradually from her Hindu roots and to strip away her original faith entirely. This methodical imposition of Islamic rituals constitutes a severe infringement on the victim’s religious freedom and highlights the religiously motivated nature of this crime. 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: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, though it is mentioned that the accused raped her in July 2025. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date, 2 July 2025, as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 2 February 2026, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
