Hindu woman forcibly converted to Islam, subjected to rape and prolonged harassment by Muslim husband and in-laws

Case ID : d3277c5 | Location : Mumbai, Maharashtra, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 15 February, 2016

Case ID : d3277c5

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

15 February, 2016

Hindu woman forcibly converted to Islam, subjected to rape and prolonged harassment by Muslim husband and in-laws

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion after marriage

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Mira-Bhayandar, Mumbai, a Hindu woman named Sayali Surve was forced to convert to Islam, subjected to rape, physical assault, mental harassment, and a forced miscarriage at the hands of her Muslim husband, Atif Tashe (also spelled Taase/Tase), his mother, Gulshan Tashe (known as “Lady Don”), and his father, Arif Tashe, over an extended period. The perpetrators systematically exploited and abused her to shatter her Hindu faith, using relentless coercion, beatings, verbal torment, and psychological manipulation to strip away her religious identity. This incident came to light when the police registered a First Information Report (FIR) under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita following Sayali Surve's, a resident of Pimpri-Chinchwad in Pune and the winner of the Miss India Earth 2019 title, complaint, and investigation proceeded based on medical evidence and her detailed statement. According to reports, the Tashe family, also known as the Patel family, resided in the Kashimira area of Mira-Bhayandar in Mumbai. Gulshan Tashe, referred to as “Lady Don,” led a gang working for the Dawood Ibrahim gang. The family had a notorious criminal background with over half a dozen cases registered against them, including kidnapping, attempt to murder, extortion (hafta vasuli), land grabbing, and charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act. The Hindu woman, Sayali Surve, was lured into a marriage by Atif Tashe about ten years ago, in 2016, against the wishes of her family. From the beginning of her marriage to him, she underwent continuous pressure to convert to Islam. She faced pressure to offer Namaz (Islamic prayers) and abandon her Hindu faith. According to her statements, she was forcibly converted to Islam and her name was changed to “Ateza Tase.” When she resisted or objected to this pressure, her husband and in-laws responded with physical beatings, verbal abuse, and mental torture designed to break her resistance. Despite her initial reluctance, she underwent forced conversion to Islam after marriage through sustained coercion and violence. The pressure to convert accompanied systematic abuse, violence, and psychological manipulation aimed at forcing her to abandon her Hindu identity and religious practices. Her husband, Atif Tashe, raped her and subjected her to ongoing physical abuse. The sexual violence occurred within the marriage, with Atif exploiting his position as her husband to assault her. Her in-laws, Gulshan Tashe and Arif Tashe, abused her so severely that it resulted in the loss of her pregnancy, causing deep physical and mental trauma. The victim also endured continuous mental harassment from all three family members throughout her marriage. The psychological torture included not only the relentless pressure to convert and threats related to her refusal, but also the trauma of living in a household controlled by individuals with underworld connections and a history of violent crime. The family's criminal reputation and connections to the Dawood Ibrahim network amplified her fear and sense of helplessness. The victim filed a complaint at the Kashimira police station detailing the abuse, forced conversion, rape, assault, and forced miscarriage. Police registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Atif Tashe, Gulshan Tashe, and Arif Tashe under serious sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The charges included forced religious conversion, rape, physical assault, and related offences. Police recorded the victim's detailed statement and conducted an investigation based on medical evidence and other proof. According to police sources, the investigation proceeded with examination of medical and forensic evidence to corroborate her statements. The serious nature of the charges, combined with the family's known criminal background, made this a high-priority case. The Tashe family's extensive criminal record provided context to the current charges. With over half a dozen cases already registered against them for serious crimes, including kidnapping, attempt to murder, extortion (hafta vasuli), land grabbing, and Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) charges, the family had an established pattern of using violence and intimidation to achieve their objectives. The involvement of the notorious “Lady Don” Gulshan Tashe and her family's alleged connections to organised crime brought additional attention to the investigation. Years after enduring abuse, Sayali Surve publicly stated that marrying Atif Tashe had been “the biggest mistake of her life.” She later left the marriage and returned to Hinduism through a purification ritual (ghar wapsi) conducted with Vedic chanting and homa-havan in Pimpri-Chinchwad, after which she adopted the name “Aadya Surve.”

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category- Crimes against women in relationships and 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. The other subcategory selected is- Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. Another primary category selected is- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory 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. This case involves the systematic exploitation of a Hindu woman through forced religious conversion, rape, physical assault, mental harassment, and forced miscarriage by her Muslim husband and in-laws. The perpetrators used violence, sexual assault, psychological manipulation, and criminal intimidation to force a Hindu woman to abandon her faith, making this a clear case of a religiously motivated hate crime. Here, even though the Muslim perpetrator openly revealed his religious identity before marriage, he manipulated the Hindu woman into believing her Hindu faith would never hinder their relationship or marriage. He exploited this false assurance to trap her into matrimony, only to unleash relentless post-marital coercion, beatings, isolation, and psychological torment, culminating in her forced conversion to Islam. This calculated deception and subsequent assault on her religious autonomy constituted a hate crime by deliberately targeting her Hindu identity for erasure; it weaponised trust to dismantle her faith, signalling deep-seated contempt for Hindus who dare preserve their beliefs in interfaith unions, transforming a personal bond into predatory religious persecution. The perpetrator's entire family, his mother Gulshan Tashe ("Lady Don") and father Arif Tashe, actively joined in subjecting her to savage coercion, relentless harassment, brutal beatings, and a deliberate forced miscarriage when she resisted conversion. Assaulting a Hindu woman specifically for refusing to abandon her ancestral faith exposed calculated malice far beyond domestic strife. The family's organised complicity, leveraging their criminal syndicate ties, revealed a collective plot to obliterate her Hindu roots through physical destruction of her body and beliefs. This familial conspiracy amplified the violence into communal hostility, marking it as a hate crime where an entire unit conspired to terrorise and subjugate the victim due to her Hindu identity, making it a religiously motivated offence. The perpetrators further imposed Islamic practices on the victim, pressuring her to offer Namaz (Islamic prayers), forcibly severing her from the Hindu rituals, festivals, and devotional life she held sacred. This cultural strangulation, coupled with the starvation of Hindu symbols, texts, and prayers, directly eroded her spiritual core, culminating in her coerced conversion amidst unceasing torture and harassment. Such systematic replacement of Hindu devotion with alien rites exemplified a religiously motivated hate crime through actions, aiming to annihilate her Hindu faith and replace it with Islam, making it a hate-driven offence. The rape and sexual violence inflicted upon the victim by her Muslim husband transcended mere lust; it served as a tool to humiliate and dominate her precisely as a Hindu woman, enforcing submission through religiously charged brutality that demeaned her sacred beliefs and bodily autonomy tied to her faith. This religiously inflected sexual violence constituted a hate crime, as it demonstrated the level to which she was dehumanised due to her faith identity. Overall, this saga exposes deep-seated animosity towards a Hindu woman due to her faith identity; therefore, it is being added to the hate crime database of the tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a crime occurred, or a victim's ordeal began, rather than when the media reported it. In this case, media reports did not state the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. Therefore, the publication date, 16 February 2026, served as the indicative incident date. This was recorded for documentation purposes only. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, though it is mentioned that she was lured into marriage in 2016. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date, 16 February 2016, as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 16 February 2016, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.