Hindu transgender woman blackmailed and coerced for religious conversion by Muslim transgenders in Nashik, Maharashtra

Case ID : d32786b | Location : Nashik, Maharashtra, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 9 February, 2020

Case ID : d32786b

Nashik, Maharashtra, India

9 February, 2020

Hindu transgender woman blackmailed and coerced for religious conversion by Muslim transgenders in Nashik, Maharashtra

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Nashik, Maharashtra, a 28-year-old Hindu transgender woman from the Gajanan Chowk area was blackmailed, threatened and pressured for religious conversion by three Muslim transgenders, Abdul Jalaluddin Sheikh, Salma Nayak and one other person. The accused, Abdul Jalaluddin Sheikh, initially pretended to be a Hindu transgender to deceive the victim into a friendship. The incident came to light after the Hindu transgender woman filed a complaint at Panchavati Police Station, stating that a Muslim transgender had taken nude photographs of her and had used them to blackmail her into religious conversion. She stated that she was threatened with the photographs being made viral, was demanded fifteen lakh rupees, and was pressured to convert to Islam. She further stated that when she refused, she and her family were threatened with death. The victim was also assaulted for not paying the money that was demanded by the accused. According to the complaint, the sequence began in 2020, when the victim was introduced to the Muslim accused, who posed as a Hindu transgender known as “Parvati” by an acquaintance in the Kalika Nagar area, where a religious darbar of the goddess Durga was being held. The Muslim accused and the Hindu transgender began visiting the residence in connection with the religious gathering. During this period, obscene nude photographs of the victim were secretly taken by the Muslim accused. Over time, the victim discovered that “Parvati” was in fact Abdul Jalaluddin Sheikh. After learning this, she reduced contact. Following this distancing, the accused began exerting sustained pressure on her. The Hindu victim stated that Sheikh repeatedly called her, threatened to commit suicide to emotionally manipulate her, and warned that her nude photographs would be circulated publicly. Alongside the threats of making the images viral, the accused demanded fifteen lakh rupees as ransom. When the victim refused to comply with the monetary demand, she stated that pressure shifted towards religious conversion. She stated that she was told to abandon her Hindu faith and convert to Islam. Upon refusal, explicit threats were made against her and her family, including threats to kill them. Based on the complaint, Panchavati Police registered a case against Abdul Jalaluddin Sheikh, Salma Nayak and one other Muslim accomplice under relevant legal provisions relating to extortion, criminal intimidation and harassment. The investigation was initiated, and further inquiries were underway at the time of reporting.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is Predatory Proselytisation. The 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. This case exemplifies a religiously motivated hate crime from the very outset, as the Muslim transgender accused, Abdul Jalaluddin Sheikh, deliberately pretended to be Hindu, posing as “Parvati”, to lure the 28-year-old Hindu transgender woman into a false sense of friendship and trust. By exploiting the victim's shared Hindu transgender identity and cultural affinity under this deception, the perpetrator gained intimate access, secretly capturing obscene nude photographs of her. This calculated identity deception reveals a predatory intent rooted in religious bias, targeting the victim specifically for her Hindu faith from the beginning. The entire scheme, deception, secret photography, and subsequent blackmail, was designed to trap and force her religious conversion to Islam, dehumanising her Hindu identity and turning her vulnerability into a weapon for exploitation. Using these compromising photographs as blackmail, the perpetrator exerted relentless pressure on the victim to abandon her Hindu faith and convert to Islam, underscoring a profound religious animosity. Forcing someone to renounce their deeply held beliefs through coercion and extortion violates the sacred principle of religious autonomy, a fundamental human right enshrined in law and conscience. This was no mere personal dispute; it was a vicious assault on her Hindu identity, driven by hatred that sought to erase her spiritual self. Coerced conversion, unlike a genuine voluntary shift in faith, stands as a hallmark of hate crime, stripping the victim of dignity and agency in the most intimate realm of her existence. When the victim courageously refused to convert, the threats escalated into explicit death warnings against her and her family, amplifying the perpetrator's deep-seated religious animosity towards her as a Hindu. Such coercion through such terror is not random aggression but a deliberate tactic to break the spirit of someone targeted for their faith, intimidating not just the individual but her entire community. This pattern of escalating threats upon resistance to conversion lays bare the hate crime's core: an unrelenting drive to punish and subjugate the victim's Hindu identity. Beyond religious coercion, the perpetrators demanded fifteen lakh rupees from the victim, and upon her refusal, they assaulted her physically while intensifying the threats. This economic exploitation, intertwined with religious targeting, reveals how they viewed the Hindu transgender woman not as a fellow human or community member, but as a dehumanised object, vulnerable due to her faith, for financial gain and forced conversion. In the backdrop of initial deception and blackmail, this assault underscores the crime's religious motivation, exploiting her Hindu and transgender identities as tools for predation. Such instances of forced conversion stem from deep-seated religious animosity against Hindus, often rooted in Abrahamic doctrines that dehumanise non-adherents until they submit and convert. This worldview treats Hindus as lesser beings unworthy of respect outside the fold, fuelling doctrinal hatred against Hinduism and the Hindu community. Therefore, this case has been added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the dates of incidents based on when a victim's ordeal begins, rather than when it is reported by the media. However, in this case, media reports did not specify the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, only the year 2020, without a specific date or month. The first media report on this incident was published on 10 February 2026. Based on this information, 10 February 2020 has been selected as the indicative incident date. This is recorded for documentation purposes only.