Minor Hindu girl lured, drugged, converted to Islam and forced into nikah by Muslim boy in Mumbai, Maharashtra
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 
13 November, 2019
Case Summary
In Mumbai, Maharashtra, a minor Hindu girl was lured, drugged, converted to Islam and forced into nikah by a Muslim boy. The victim stated that her ordeal began in 2019, when she was just 16 years old. The Muslim boy, who lured and trapped her, took her to Mahim Dargah on 24 November 2019. She stated that she was given a glass of water that tasted bitter, after which she was administered drugs. She said manipulative practices occurred in concealed areas of the premises beyond what visitors ordinarily saw. Subsequently, the Muslim boy pressured her to undergo nikah (Islamic marriage) with him. She stated that she experienced severe psychological distress and even attempted suicide because she did not wish to marry the accused and wanted to prioritise her education and career. Despite this, she was forcibly drugged and manipulated. She further stated that she was subsequently taken to Bandra Court, Mumbai, where, without her knowledge or consent, she was converted to Islam and made to undergo a nikah ceremony. Even her name was changed from Palak as part of this process. She described the nikah and conversion as having taken place without her informed approval. She stated that she later received support from her parents and social workers, following which counselling and medical treatment began. Approximately one month later, she was taken out of Maharashtra to distance herself from the environment she associated with the manipulation. After regaining mental stability, she returned to Mumbai and filed a First Information Report. However, she described facing obstruction during this process and stated that a police officer attempted to prevent the filing of the FIR and made derogatory remarks about her character. The incident came to light during the public testimonies of multiple Hindu women, who were survivors of organised targeting, sexual exploitation and coercive religious conversion efforts at the hands of Muslim men. Their statements were delivered at a public event in New Delhi organised on 23 February 2026, ahead of the release of the film The Kerala Story 2, where activists and participants framed their experiences as part of a broader pattern of systematic grooming and religious manipulation of Hindu women. The testimonies included detailed accounts of deception, sexual violence, forced religious practices, intimidation, blackmail, and what they described as repeated inaction by local authorities.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories under it are: Conversion of minor and Pattern of targeting Hindus. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting, regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to the existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytisation, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here 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. The other primary category selected here is - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Forced conversion before marriage, with the tertiary category being - Forced to do nikah. 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. The other sub-category is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - Conversion of minor. 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 constitutes a religiously motivated hate crime because the minor Hindu girl was deliberately targeted, deceived, drugged, and subjected to coerced religious conversion and nikah by the Muslim boy. The pattern of conduct demonstrates that the abuse was not merely interpersonal or romantic in nature but involved the suppression and erasure of her religious autonomy through deception, coercion, and force. Firstly, it is important to note here that the victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate. Such acts are not merely criminal in nature; they are ideologically charged, revealing religious prejudice and a calculated intent to alter the religious identity of a minor without her volition. Secondly, in Islam, marriage to a non-Muslim partner is prohibited, which is why she was forcibly converted to Islam before being forced to undergo nikah. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another was a direct attack on her religious identity and dignity. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Thirdly, after conversion and nikah, even her name was changed to Palak. It was not a neutral step but a symbolic assertion of Islamic identity over her existing Hindu identity. Replacing her given Hindu name as part of the conversion process functioned as a formal and symbolic severing of her original religious identity and an imposition of another faith. It constituted a direct violation of her religious autonomy and personal dignity, amounting to the enforced substitution of one faith identity with another. Fourth, the victim was given a bitter-tasting drink at Mahim Dargah, subsequently drugged and manipulated when she resisted the nikah. The administration of intoxicants removed her capacity to exercise free and informed consent at critical stages of the conversion and nikah process. The use of drugs within a religious setting, followed by sustained pressure to marry and convert, indicates a calculated effort to override her agency. Her severe psychological distress, including a suicide attempt due to the pressure to abandon her education and accept the imposed marriage, underscores that compliance was not voluntary. Coercion in the face of clear refusal demonstrates that acceptance of the religious and marital change was being enforced rather than freely chosen, reinforcing the coercive and identity-targeted character of the acts. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. Therefore, religious conversions, even of minors, are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. The broader context in which her testimony was given demonstrates that this was not an isolated interpersonal incident but was part of a pattern of religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus. Her account was presented alongside testimonies of multiple Hindu women who described similar experiences involving identity concealment, coercive conversion, forced nikah, and psychological manipulation. The convergence of recurring elements across independent narratives, particularly deception regarding religious identity, pressure to undergo Islamic rituals or marriage, and the overriding of informed consent, demonstrates systematic targeting of Hindus. 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. The earliest date mentioned is 14 November 2019, when she was taken to the Mahim Dargah. Since Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began and not when it was reported, we have considered the date of the incident as 14 November 2019, though the media reported the incident on 25 February 2026.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
