Hindu girl raped under pretext of marriage, pressured for religious conversion by Muslim man in Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh

Case ID : d3278a5 | Location : Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 3 February, 2026

Case ID : d3278a5

Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

3 February, 2026

Hindu girl raped under pretext of marriage, pressured for religious conversion by Muslim man in Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

In Alirajpur district, Madhya Pradesh, a Hindu girl from Ambua village was lured into a relationship, abducted, and raped under the pretext of marriage by a Muslim man identified as Wasim. The accused also pressured the Hindu victim to convert to Islam. The Hindu girl remained away from her home for several days before being traced by the police. The incident caused harm to the Hindu victim and distress to her family. The Muslim perpetrator, identified as Wasim, had lured the Hindu victim into a romantic relationship. According to the complaint, he developed a relationship with the Hindu victim by promising to marry her. He persuaded her to leave her home and go with him. The victim's family stated that he threatened her and pressured her for religious conversion. When the Hindu girl did not return home for several days, her family became concerned. On 4 February 2026, they filed a missing person complaint at Ambua police station. In the complaint, they informed the police that they suspected a man named Wasim from their locality had abducted their daughter. The police began searching for the Hindu victim. During the investigation, information was received that the Muslim perpetrator was staying with the Hindu girl in a rented house in Jobat. Police conducted a raid at the rented house in Jobat and recovered the Hindu victim. Wasim was detained from the spot. During police questioning, the Hindu girl stated that the Muslim perpetrator had lured her with the promise of marriage and taken her to Jobat. She told the police that he forcibly had sexual relations with her several times inside the house. She also stated that he pressured her to convert to Islam. Reports further mentioned that the Muslim perpetrator was already married at the time of the incident. Following the complaint by the Hindu victim’s family, the police registered a case against the Muslim perpetrator under sections related to rape. Provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the Religious Freedom Act were also invoked. He was detained and further legal action was ongoing in connection with the case.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category here 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. Another sub-category for this case is "Brainwashed and/or groomed". The tertiary category here 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. This case was a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, as a Hindu girl from Ambua village in Alirajpur district, Madhya Pradesh, was lured into a relationship under the pretext of marriage, raped repeatedly, and pressured for religious conversion by the Muslim perpetrator Wasim. This deliberate sequence of deception, abduction, sexual violence, and conversion demands revealed his profound hostility towards her Hindu faith, transforming what began as a false promise of love into a calculated assault on her religious and personal identity. By selecting her as a target solely because she was Hindu, Wasim weaponised interfaith dynamics to violate her body and spirit, exposing the crime's core motivation as religious animosity rather than random opportunism, which defines it unequivocally as a hate crime against Hindus. In this case, even though the perpetrator did not hide his religious identity to deceive the victim, the nature of their relationship clearly showcased that the Hindu girl believed her religion would never serve as a boundary or limitation to their romantic involvement, so she trusted his words and agreed to be in a relationship with him. Yet the perpetrator targeted her specifically for her religious identity, aiming to sexually assault her and force her to convert to Islam, making it a clear case of religious profiling and targeting of a Hindu girl for her faith identity, thereby constituting a hate crime. His insistence on conversion after gaining her trust through marriage promises demonstrated a predatory focus on dismantling her Hindu beliefs, as he exploited her openness to erode her spiritual foundations and impose his faith, revealing calculated prejudice that elevated the offence beyond personal misconduct into targeted religious persecution. Forcing a Hindu girl to convert to Islam violated her religious autonomy and fundamental rights to practise her faith freely. Forced conversions represent a profound violation of religious autonomy, as they strip individuals of their spiritual agency and impose an alien faith through coercion. Therefore, in this case, forcing a Hindu girl to convert to Islam showcased the perpetrator's deep-seated religious animosity towards her faith identity, making it a hate crime. This aggressive proselytisation sought to humiliate her by severing her from her cultural roots and community, asserting dominance over her sacred beliefs in a manner that mirrored broader patterns of hostility towards Hindus, thus fulfilling every criterion of religiously motivated violence. Furthermore, the act of luring the victim under the pretext of marriage and then forcibly raping her multiple times showcased the perpetrator's deep-seated hatred for Hinduism. In this case, rape was not committed out of mere sexual gratification but to target and humiliate a Hindu victim for her religious identity. Such religiously profiled rapes are clearly religiously motivated hate crimes. By combining false marital vows with repeated assaults in a rented house, he aimed to degrade her dignity as a Hindu girl, using sexual violence as a tool to subjugate her faith and send a chilling message of vulnerability to her community, cementing the religious bias at the heart of his brutality. Overall, since this case met the parameters of a hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records dates of incidents based on when a crime occurred rather than when it was reported by the media. In this case, media reports did not state the exact date from when the victim's ordeal began. The only date mentioned was 4 February 2026, when the victim's family filed a complaint at the police station. Therefore, this date was selected as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes only.