Hindu woman groomed, lured away from home and forcibly converted through nikah by Muslim men

Case ID : d3279c8 | Location : Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 12 February, 2026

Case ID : d3279c8

Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, India

12 February, 2026

Hindu woman groomed, lured away from home and forcibly converted through nikah by Muslim men

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to do Nikah

Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices

Forced to go to Mosque

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Family claims grooming

Case Summary

A Hindu woman from Chunar in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, was systematically groomed and drawn into a relationship by a Muslim man, Suhel Khan alias Chhotu, a resident of the same village. Over time, he built her trust and convinced her to leave her home under false pretences. She was taken to Varanasi, where she was forcibly brought to a mosque and made to undergo a nikah, an Islamic marriage ceremony, against her will. The sequence of events amounted to a calculated and premeditated act that resulted in her forced religious conversion. Suhel Khan alias Chhotu, a resident of Muhammadpur in the Chunar area of Mirzapur, first developed a close relationship with the Hindu woman, who lived in the same village. Gradually, he persuaded her to leave her family home. On the night she left, she carried with her gold and silver jewellery and documents connected to approximately ninety thousand rupees, indicating that she had been misled into believing she was leaving for a genuine and secure future. She was then taken to Varanasi by Suhel Khan. After arriving there, he brought her to a mosque on 15 February 2026, where the nikah was conducted. She was recovered by the police from the Ramapura area of Varanasi on 16 February 2026. Following her recovery, she told officers that she had been taken to the mosque and compelled to undergo the nikah against her will. During questioning, Suhel Khan admitted that he had lured her into the relationship and arranged the nikah. The woman’s mother submitted a written complaint at Chunar Kotwali police station on 14 February 2026, stating that her daughter had been enticed away and subjected to a forced religious conversion. A case was registered under Sections 137(2), 87, 351(3), and 352 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, India’s updated criminal code, as well as under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Act. The Superintendent of Police, Mirzapur, Aparna Rajat Kaushik, directed immediate action and instructed the Circle Officer Sadar and the officer in charge of Chunar police station to ensure swift arrests. On 19 February 2026, the police received information that the three men were near Kailhat Underpass. They were surrounded and arrested at the scene. Suhel Khan alias Chhotu, Karamat Khan, and Niyamat Khan, all residents of Muhammadpur in Chunar, Mirzapur, were subsequently sent to judicial custody.

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". The tertiary categories here are "Forced to do Nikah", "Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices" and "Forced to go to Mosque". 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. One other sub-category here is "Brainwashed and/groomed". The tertiary category here is "Family claims grooming". 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 carried clear religious markers because the Hindu woman was not merely lured into a personal relationship but was systematically groomed, isolated from her family, and ultimately taken to a mosque where she was forced to undergo a nikah and religious conversion against her will. The sequence showed premeditated targeting in which emotional manipulation was used as a pathway to conversion. The religious dimension became especially evident from the fact that the relationship culminated not in a consensual interfaith arrangement based on transparency, but in forced nikah and conversion inside a mosque. The victim herself stated that she was compelled to undergo the Islamic marriage ceremony against her will after being taken away from her home. This demonstrated that conversion was not incidental to the relationship but one of its central objectives. Another important aspect was the calculated grooming process used to gain the Hindu woman’s trust before separating her from her family and social environment. The accused gradually built emotional influence over her and persuaded her to leave home carrying jewellery, money related documents, and valuables, indicating that she had been misled into believing she was entering a secure future. The deception and emotional manipulation were therefore not crimes of opportunity but part of a deliberate process leading towards religious conversion. The case also reflected a broader pattern where Hindu women are targeted through emotional grooming, coercion, and deceptive relationships that later culminate in forced conversion and nikah. Such acts stem from hostility towards the victim’s professed faith and treat Hindu women as subjects to be absorbed into another religious identity through manipulation and pressure rather than free and informed choice. Taken together, the systematic grooming, forced nikah inside a mosque, coercive conversion, and deliberate emotional manipulation established the religiously aggravating nature of the offence. The conduct directly targeted the victim’s Hindu identity and sought to sever her from her religion, family, and social roots through coercive religious conversion. 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, the Hindu victim's ordeal can be traced back to an earlier period during which the main perpetrator, Suhel Khan alias Chhotu, systematically groomed her over an extended period of time. However, since the exact date on which the grooming began was not available in the sources, February 13, 2026, has been chosen as the indicative incident date, as it represents the night on which the Hindu victim was lured away from her home, marking the point at which the perpetrators' scheme entered its most acute and directly criminal phase. This was recorded for documentation purposes only.