Case Summary

In Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu minor girl was deceived into a marriage, after which she was forcibly converted to Islam, raped on several occasions, and tortured by a Muslim man and his other Muslim accomplices. The Hinduphobia Tracker accessed the First Information Report (FIR) in the case. The FIR confirmed that the victim was a Hindu girl belonging to the OBC community. According to media reports, on 13 December 2025, the victim's mother lodged an FIR at Salon police station against the Muslim perpetrators, Sameer Ghosi, son of Munshiraj Ghosi, along with Moharram Ali and Waseem. According to the complaint, the minor victim was lured into a relationship by Sameer Ghosi. The accused then married her, after which he forcibly converted her to Islam. She was also subjected to repeated humiliation, assault, and rape. She was confined to a separate room and tortured. The abuse was so severe that she lost her child during pregnancy. The complaint also referred to her being subjected to choking around the neck by the accused and her being abandoned by being thrown out of the house. Based on the complaint, a case was registered at Salon police station against the Muslim perpetrators under Sections 352, 92, 127(3), 115(2), and 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Act, as well as Section 3/5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Act, 2022 and 2023. During the investigation, Sections 3 and 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were also added based on the victim’s mother's statements. On 10 February 2026, the accused, Sameer Ghosi, was arrested at Lalapur intersection by a police team consisting of Sub-Inspector Archit Agarwal and Constable Ashish Kumar. Following his arrest, legal proceedings were completed, and he was remanded to judicial custody. The accused, Sameer Ghosi, was sent to judicial custody after his arrest, and the matter remained sub judice at the time of writing this report.

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Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories under it are: Family claims grooming, Conversion of minor, 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 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 the 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - Family claims grooming, 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’ 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 are crimes, for 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 hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was lured into a marriage, subjected to sustained sexual exploitation, intimidation, brutal torture during pregnancy, and coercive pressure for religious conversion by the Muslim accused, Sameer Ghosh. The accused was also supported by his two Muslim accomplices. Firstly, it is important to note here that when the accused trapped the victim, she was just 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 or being in a relationship or marriage with an adult, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Additionally, any supposed consent given for a marraige is already considered invalid under the POCSO Act. Such acts were not merely criminal in nature; they were 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 was built only to exploit, was an insidious method that exploited the child’s naivety and dependence. Secondly, the accused groomed her, sexually exploited her, and subjected her to repeated humiliation and assault. The torture was so severe that when she became pregnant, she lost her child. These exploitations 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 coerced her into conversion. The target was not the victim as an individual, but her Hindu identity. The specific focus on her Hindu identity in the commission of these acts highlighted the religious hatred underlying the crime, making it a religiously motivated offence. Thirdly, the accused attempted to force the victim to renounce her religion and convert to Islam after marriage. 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 reflected 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. Fourth, in such cases, sexual violence, pregnancy loss, and sustained harassment served a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The continuous pattern of intimidation, threats, and torture was intended to break the victim down emotionally, physically, and psychologically, thereby weakening her ability to resist coercive demands for religious conversion. This conduct was not random or impulsive; it was systematic, targeted, and sustained, rooted in hostility towards the victim’s Hindu identity. The subsequent demand for conversion further demonstrated that the abuse and harassment were directed not merely at controlling the victim as an individual but at undermining and erasing her Hindu religious identity. This pattern of deception, coercion for conversion, rape and assault demonstrated that the accused was never interested in a genuine relationship with the Hindu girl; rather, the relationship functioned solely as a means for sexual exploitation, control, and religious conversion. The targeted use of humiliation, torture, threats, and pregnancy loss because of the victim’s Hindu identity constituted a hate crime, as the harm was inflicted not only on the individual but also on her religious identity and social belonging. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's Hindu faith, as Abrahamic doctrines often view non-adherents with utter contempt and dehumanise them. These predatory acts arise from doctrinal animosity towards Hinduism and its followers. Therefore, this case was 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 specified the exact date when the victim’s ordeal began. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded 13 December 2025, the date on which the FIR was lodged by the victim's mother, as the indicative incident date. This is recorded for documentation purposes only.