Hindu woman subjected to death threats, stalking, and stone pelting by members of Chhangur Baba gang for exposing Muslim conversion gang

Case ID : d32793b | Location : Bara Banki, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 20 February, 2026

Case ID : d32793b

Bara Banki, Uttar Pradesh, India

20 February, 2026

Hindu woman subjected to death threats, stalking, and stone pelting by members of Chhangur Baba gang for exposing Muslim conversion gang

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim

Case Summary

In Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, an NGO operator named Ricksha Tufail was subjected to death threats, stalking, and stone pelting by members of the Chhangur Baba gang, after she exposed a network involved in religious conversion and sexual exploitation targeting Hindu women operating from the Brown Glass Café in Lucknow. The victim, Ricksha Tufail, ran an NGO named Prahar Dowry and had been actively supporting victims in cases concerning conversion, rape, and coercion linked to activities at the café located in Gomti Nagar. Following her intervention and the registration of a case at Gomti Nagar police station, members of the network, identified as Qamar Hayat Idrisi, Zafar Hayat Idrisi, Qamar Jamal, Aamir Khan and others, came under police scrutiny. Qamar Hayat Idrisi was arrested, while the remaining accused were absconding at the time. Subsequently, the NGO operator began receiving continuous threats. On the night of 21 February 2026, at around 11:15 pm, she received multiple threatening phone calls from local as well as international numbers. Death threats and obscene messages were sent to her via WhatsApp, and she was subjected to verbal abuse. The callers informed her that she was being stalked and that they had tracked her residence. Shortly thereafter, stones were thrown at the window of her house in Barabanki, creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. The perpetrators warned of sexual violence and threatened to circulate her explicit videos. The victim approached the City Kotwali police station in Barabanki and filed a formal complaint. An FIR was registered on the basis of two mobile numbers, and the police initiated an investigation. According to the City Police Inspector Sudhir Kumar Singh, the accused were being identified through call detail records and digital evidence. The incident occurred days after multiple Hindu women were targeted, blackmailed, raped and pressured for religious conversion by Muslim men in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. The accused pretended to be Hindus to lure Hindu women and recorded obscene videos of them, through which they blackmailed them for prostitution and religious conversion. The accused were also connected to Chhangur Peer, alias Chhangur Baba, an Islamic peer who was involved in forcibly converting thousands of Hindus to Islam and who ran a grooming/conversion gang from Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh. It is pertinent to mention that the Uttar Pradesh ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) had dismantled this organised network, uncovering its systematic operation aimed at targeting and converting Hindu individuals, particularly women and minors, to Islam. According to the investigation, Chhangur Baba provided financial incentives to Muslim men to lure Hindu women, often under false identities by posing as Hindus, and then pressured them into conversion. Once converted, these women were married off through Nikah ceremonies arranged by Chhangur Baba himself. Authorities also discovered that Chhangur Baba had published a book titled Shijra-e-Tayyaba, intended as a manual to propagate Islam. The ATS investigation revealed that his network operated on a structured incentive model: Rs15–16 lakh was paid for converting Brahmin, Sikh, or Kshatriya women; Rs10–12 lakh for OBC women; and Rs8–10 lakh for those from other castes. He, along with his wife, was arrested on 5th July 2025. The ATS confirmed that the gang had received nearly Rs100 crore in foreign funds to facilitate these illegal conversions across India. Members of his own family were reportedly involved in the operation. The Hinduphobia Tracker has documented multiple cases involving Chhangur Baba. In all these cases, Hindu victims were religiously profiled, deliberately targeted because of their religious identity. They were forced to convert to Islam through the use of force, deception, harassment, incentives, and intimidation. In the first case, Chhangur encouraged a Muslim man named Meraj to lure a Hindu woman named Aarti by posing as a Hindu. Afterwards, Chhangur, along with Meraj, forcibly converted her to Islam and conducted her Nikah according to Islamic customs. Another case involved a Hindu man named Harjeet, who was forcibly converted to Islam by Chhangur. The accused had offered Harjeet incentives and subjected him to harassment and had filed false cases against him in an attempt to persuade him to convert to Islam. Similarly, in another case, in Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu man named Sanchit and his wife were lured to convert to Islam with incentives by the Muslim Peer Chhangur. Both victims were also subjected to death threats and were harassed with false cases for refusing to convert. Another such instance was reported in Faridabad, Haryana, where a minor Hindu girl was brainwashed and forcibly converted to Islam by her Muslim neighbours who were part of a Muslim gang run by the Muslim peer Chhangur. After her conversion, her Hindu identity was erased; she was given a Muslim name, compelled to wear a burqa, forced to perform Islamic rituals, and fed meat against her beliefs. She was horrifically exploited sexually, blackmailed using obscene videos, and pushed into prostitution. In another such case, a Hindu woman named Rashmi (name changed) from Karnataka was trafficked to Saudi Arabia and subjected to years of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse as part of a systematic religious conversion racket operated under the influence of Islamic Peer Jalaluddin alias Chhangur Baba. Under false pretences of marriage and employment, the woman was entrapped, manipulated, and eventually transported across international borders. In another case, in Ranipokhari, Uttarakhand, a young Hindu woman became the target of an organised Muslim conversion gang who attempted to forcibly convert her to Islam through online grooming, emotional pressure, and inducements. This conversion gang was connected to Chhangur Peer.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Attacked not resulting in death. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim. In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. This case has been added to the tracker as a Hindu woman was subjected to death threats, stalking, and stone pelting by members of the Chhangur Baba gang, after she exposed a network involved in religious conversion and sexual exploitation targeting Hindu women operating from the Brown Glass Café in Lucknow. This incident qualified as a hate crime because the attack on the NGO operator was directly connected to her support for Hindu victims who were targeted by the religious conversion network linked to Peer Chhangur. Her actions directly challenged the organised network that had targeted Hindu women for sexual exploitation, intertwined with religious coercion. After she exposed the racket and facilitated legal proceedings, she began receiving death threats, obscene messages, and calls from both domestic and international numbers. Stones were thrown at her residence, and she was warned that she was being followed and tracked to her home. The threats included sexual violence and intimidation meant to silence her. The timing and context of the threats demonstrated clear retaliatory intent. The accused did not randomly select the NGO operator. She was targeted because she helped Hindu victims file police complaints and ensured that cases were registered against the perpetrators. The death threats, obscene messages, and physical intimidation were meant to silence her and deter further advocacy on behalf of Hindu victims. This pattern reflected religious animosity towards Hindus. The original offences involved the deliberate targeting of Hindu women, and when those actions were exposed, the hostility extended to a person who stood in defence of the Hindu community. The intimidation was therefore not isolated harassment but an attempt to suppress resistance to religion-based victimisation. Targeting someone for supporting Hindu victims indicated that the motive went beyond personal grievance and entered the realm of community-directed hostility. Therefore, the Barabanki incident qualified as a hate crime because the violence and threats were intrinsically linked to a prior pattern of religion-based victimisation. The NGO operator was attacked specifically because she stood with Hindu victims and disrupted a network accused of exploiting them on religious grounds. The targeting of her was retaliatory, ideologically charged, and intended to protect a system that had selected victims on the basis of their Hindu identity.