Minor Hindu girl abducted on gunpoint, pressured for religious conversion by Muslim man in Jaspur, Uttarakhand

Case ID : d327b6e | Location : Jaspur, Uttarakhand, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 16 February, 2026

Case ID : d327b6e

Jaspur, Uttarakhand, India

16 February, 2026

Minor Hindu girl abducted on gunpoint, pressured for religious conversion by Muslim man in Jaspur, Uttarakhand

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Jaspur, Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand, a minor Hindu girl, aged 17, was abducted at gunpoint and pressured to convert to Islam by a Muslim man. According to media reports, this incident came to light when the victim's father, a resident of a village in the Jaspur area, submitted a petition in the court of Judicial Magistrate Jaspur, stating that his minor daughter went missing from home at 3 o'clock in the night of 17 February 2026. On 22 February 2026, he received information from a Muslim man named Nadeem and others that a Muslim youth resident of Jafraabad, Bijnor, had a country-made pistol in his hand and lured and coaxed his daughter while threatening to kill anyone who intervened. The victim's father stated that the Muslim youth forcibly abducted his daughter at pistol point with the intention of converting her religion and spoiling communal harmony, due to which his family suffered religious, mental, and physical damage. He stated that his daughter's date of birth was 18 April 2008; his daughter was a minor. There was a strict danger to his daughter's honour and life. The Muslim youth and his father had previously served jail time for many crimes. The victim's father demanded legal action against the Muslim man. On the order of the court, Jaspur Kotwali police registered a case against the Muslim perpetrator under sections 137(2), 351(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and handed over the investigation of the case to Sub-Inspector Santosh Dewrani.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category selected is- Conversion of minor. 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 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 proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other subcategory 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 represents a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, where a Muslim man abducted a 17-year-old Hindu girl at gunpoint in Jaspur, Uttarakhand, and pressured her to convert to Islam, exposing the perpetrator's deep-seated religious animosity towards her Hindu identity. In this case, it is first important to state that the victim is a minor. This means that 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, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. The entire incident revolved around the perpetrator's determined attempt to strip this vulnerable 17-year-old Hindu girl of her faith, using a country-made pistol to threaten and intimidate her while luring her away from her family and the safety of her home. This armed abduction unequivocally marks it as a hate-driven assault on her religious identity and dignity, as the perpetrator singled her out precisely because she was Hindu, deploying violence not for personal gain but to eradicate her spiritual core through forced conversion. Forced religious conversion constitutes a profound violation of her religious autonomy, ruthlessly denying her fundamental right to practise Hinduism freely, honour her family's traditions, and embrace her heritage without coercion or fear. By shattering her personal security and spiritual freedom, he reduced this cherished Hindu girl to a mere target for religious conquest, exposing his contempt for her constitutional right to self-determination and belief, while treating her faith as an obstacle to be violently demolished. This deliberate targeting extended beyond physical kidnapping to a calculated spiritual annihilation, where the Muslim perpetrator weaponised his pistol to sever her from her faith and community identity. His threats to kill anyone who intervened further underscored his supremacist mindset, positioning Hinduism as inferior and unworthy of existence, which transforms coercion into a textbook hate crime motivated by interfaith animosity. The choice of a minor victim amplified this hatred, exploiting her youth to bypass any pretence of consent and imprint his ideology through force, thereby inflicting lasting trauma not just on her psyche and family but on the broader Hindu community's sense of safety and cultural continuity. Such religiously fuelled aggression demands recognition as a hate crime, alerting society to patterns of predation against Hindu girls. Given that this case meets the parameters of a hate crime, it is being added to the hate crime database of the tracker.