Minor Hindu girl abducted, raped and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man
Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, India 
10 February, 2020
Case Summary
In the Malipur area of Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, a minor Hindu girl was lured, abducted, raped and pressured to convert to Islam by a Muslim man named Arman Qureshi. According to reports, the accused, Arman Qureshi, was a resident of Nai Bazar Dostpur in Sultanpur, who frequently visited relatives in a village in the district, where the victim resided. The accused came into contact with the victim in 2020, while she was just 13 years old. He began luring her into a relationship under the false pretext of marriage. On 11 February 2026, Arman lured the victim (now an adult) to Lucknow, where he pressured her to convert to Islam and raped her. Subsequently, the victim’s father filed a complaint with the police, based on which the police registered an FIR for harassment and coercion to marry. Acting on information, the police arrested Arman Qureshi from Lucknow on 13 February 2026. After the victim underwent medical examination and her statement was recorded, additional charges of rape, religious conversion, and relevant provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were incorporated into the case. The accused was produced before a court and remanded to judicial custody. Station in-charge Swatantra Kumar Maurya confirmed that the victim was medically examined and subsequently placed at the One Stop Centre in Akbarpur for protection and support. Further legal proceedings were to continue upon the recording of her statement before the court.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category - Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the sub-category selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category under it is: 'Conversion of minor and Rape and sexual/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 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 other primary category selected is - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected - 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 is - Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary category under it is: 'Conversion of minor and Rape and sexual/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 qualifies as a hate crime because a minor Hindu girl was lured, abducted, raped and pressured to convert to Islam by the Muslim man, Arman Qureshi. The accused lured the victim under the pretext of marriage. Firstly, it is important to highlight that the victim was a minor when the accused came into contact with the victim. This meant that any element of consent or genuine change of conscience was absent from the outset. Minors, due to their young age, are most vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They cannot make adult decision such as about getting into a relationship or getting married. Furthermore, any such supposed consent given is already considered invalid under the POCSO Act. The Muslim perpetrator deliberately exploited this vulnerability by luring the minor girl into a relationship. He later abducted her and pressured her convert. This showcased the predatory nature of the entire act and made the religiously motivated aspect of the crime clear. Secondly, the act of forcibly pressuring the Hindu girl to convert to Islam demonstrated deep-seated religious animosity rooted in supremacist beliefs that deem Hinduism inferior. 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. Furthermore, the victim was also abducted and raped by the accused. Often, 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. Thirdly, the victim was abducted by the accused. This abduction intensified the conversion angle, escalating it into a religiously motivated hate crime through physical enforcement of the religious change. By abducting the victim, separating her from her parents, and forcing her to convert to Islam, the perpetrator revealed deep-seated religious animosity towards her Hindu identity. This made the religiously motivated nature of the crime even clearer, combining coercion with isolation to suppress her faith. 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 the date of the incident based on when the crime occurred. The media reports published this case on 14 February 2026. However, the media reports do not specify the exact date of the beginning of the victim’s ordeal. The victim came in contact with the accused in 2020, and on 11 February 2026, the accused forcibly abducted the victim. Considering these two pieces of information, we are using an indicative date of 11 February 2020 as the date of the incident. This date is used for documentation purposes only and represents the estimated beginning of her ordeal.
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 
