Hindu woman raped under pretext of marriage and forced to convert to Islam by Muslim man pretending to be Hindu

Case ID : d3276e9 | Location : Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 9 August, 2024

Case ID : d3276e9

Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

9 August, 2024

Hindu woman raped under pretext of marriage and forced to convert to Islam by Muslim man pretending to be Hindu

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Forced conversion before marriage

Case Summary

In Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, a 29-year-old Hindu woman was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man named Masoom Ali, who deceived the victim by pretending to be a Hindu man named Rahul. The accused also raped the victim under the pretext of marriage and pressured her for religious conversion. According to media reports, the accused worked as a city bus conductor and met the woman during her bus travels in August 2024. The woman, who lived separately from her husband at the time and was working, became acquainted with Masoom Ali while she was commuting on a city bus operated in the Nishatpura police station area of the city. Masoom Ali introduced himself to her using the name "Rahul" and did not disclose his real identity. Based on this representation, the woman and Masoom Ali began a relationship, and he later lured her into a live-in relationship with him in Rajiv Colony, Bhopal. During the course of their relationship, the woman gave birth to a child. After the birth of the child, the woman stated that Masoom Ali began to pressure her to convert to Islam as a condition for marriage. Upon realising his actual identity and the circumstances surrounding his representation, the woman returned to her parental home and approached the police to report the sequence of events. She filed a formal complaint on 10 February 2026 detailing that he had concealed his true name and religion, that he had lived with her under a false identity, and that he had placed pressure on her to convert after the child's birth. Following the complaint, law enforcement took action. Police arrested Masoom Ali, citing charges related to identity concealment, marriage under false pretences, and pressuring the woman for religious conversion after the child's birth. Authorities presented him before the court, where he was sent to jail.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The sub-category selected is- Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category selected is- Name changed. When a non-Hindu man pretends to be a Hindu to deceive a Hindu woman into a relationship, the act is seen as triggered by malafide intentions. In some cases, the woman eventually accepts the man’s original religious identity and converts after the man’s identity is revealed. These cases could be argued as cases of religious brainwashing and a result of the pressure a woman feels after getting into a relationship with a man. The woman, it can be argued, also changed her religious identity because of the stigma she believes she might face if she chooses to walk out of a deceptive relationship. However, for the purpose of documenting hate crimes, the cases in this subcategory are limited to those where there is explicit violence aimed at religious conversion against the wishes of the victim (force-feeding beef, blackmailing with intimate videos, rape on refusal to convert, etc), or if the woman herself complains of the man’s religious deception. In such cases, it is established that the deception of the non-Hindu man had a specific aim of religious conversion or targeting of the victim due to her Hindu religious identity, therefore, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. The other subcategory selected is- Brainwashed and/or Groomed. The tertiary category selected is- 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 subcategory selected 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. In this case, the Hindu woman was deceived into a relationship by a Muslim man named Masoom Ali, pretending to be a Hindu named Rahul. After this, she was raped under the pretext of marriage and then pressured to convert to Islam. Firstly, Masoom Ali's act of deception by posing as a Hindu demonstrated clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. By hiding his true identity, he manipulated the Hindu woman's trust and targeted her under false pretences, indicating a premeditated effort to exploit her based on her religious background. This constituted a direct violation of her right to informed consent regarding her partner, as well as an infringement upon her religious beliefs. Thus, the perpetrator’s deliberate concealment of his religious identity strongly underscored the religious motive behind this crime. In such instances, identity concealment is not just a deceptive tactic for personal reasons but a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling and targeting. The accused knew the victim, being Hindu, would likely refuse his advances if aware of his real identity, and he circumvented this by lying, which directly pointed to religiously driven intent. This deception reflected a larger pattern where Hindu women were specifically singled out using false identities by Muslim men, often with coercion or conversion in mind. Such targeted victimisation based on religion demonstrated a fundamental disregard for Hinduism and exposed deeper animosity toward Hindus and their beliefs. Secondly, through deliberate deception, the Hindu woman was lured into a live-in relationship and raped by the Muslim perpetrator under the false pretext of marriage. This was not a random act of sexual exploitation; it was a targeted assault driven by religious bias, aimed at singling out and violating a Hindu woman because of her religious identity. Even though the victim was an adult, the manipulation and deceit employed by the perpetrator showcased his malicious and predatory nature. Such exploitation through manipulation and religious profiling clearly underlined the religiously motivated nature of this crime. Thirdly, after all this, the Muslim perpetrator pressured her to convert to Islam as a condition for marriage. This demonstrated that his prior deception and rape served the calculated objective of religious conversion, using sexual exploitation as a precursor to erode her resistance. Such coercion directly violated the woman’s fundamental right to practise her Hindu faith and constituted a deliberate attempt to strip her of her religious identity, replacing it with Islam through manipulation. This reflected deep-seated religious animosity and supremacist disdain towards Hindus and Hinduism, viewing her faith as inferior and worthy of eradication. By making conversion the explicit price of marriage post-exploitation, the perpetrator exposed predatory motives to dominate her spiritually, marking this as a clear, religiously motivated hate crime targeting her Hindu identity. Overall, since this case met various parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the dates of incidents based on when the victim's ordeal begins rather than when it is reported by the media. However, in this case, media reports did not state the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. They only mentioned that she first met the accused in August 2024, with the First Information Report filed on 10 February 2026. Therefore, an indicative date of 10 August 2024 was selected to estimate the beginning of her ordeal. This was recorded for documentation purposes only.