Hindu woman befriended and forced to convert to Islam by Muslim woman; held captive and tortured upon refusal

Case ID : d420ea0 | Location : Fatehpur, Rajasthan, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 17 February, 2026

Case ID : d420ea0

Fatehpur, Rajasthan, India

17 February, 2026

Hindu woman befriended and forced to convert to Islam by Muslim woman; held captive and tortured upon refusal

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for refusal to convert

Case Summary

In Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived and threatened by a Muslim woman. She was forced to convert to Islam to marry a Muslim man and was kept under wrongful confinement upon refusal. As per reports, the incident came to light when a complaint was filed by the Hindu woman. The victim came into contact with a woman named Fiza Khatoon, the wife of Naseem, living in Ganganagar colony. Fiza gradually gained her trust and began visiting her house frequently. During this time, the accused narrated stories about her financial difficulties and persuaded the Hindu woman to help her. On this pretext, Fiza Khatoon took ₹46,000 from the victim. When the Hindu woman later asked for the money back, Fiza began avoiding her and repeatedly made excuses to delay repayment. On 18 February, Fiza told the victim that they should go out for a trip and convinced her to accompany her to Delhi. Trusting her friend, the victim agreed. After reaching Delhi, Fiza took her to the house of a man named Shehzada and made her stay there. At Shehzada’s house, the situation turned coercive. Fiza Khatoon told the victim that her own husband did not earn enough and insisted that the Hindu woman should convert to Islam and perform nikah with Shehzada. The victim was pressured to accept the proposal and abandon her religion. The victim stated that when she resisted the demand for religious conversion, the accused began threatening and blackmailing her. She was kept under intimidation and prevented from leaving freely, leaving her trapped and fearful for her safety. The threats were used as a tool to force her into accepting conversion, placing her under severe psychological pressure. As per the reports, on 21 February, the victim somehow managed to escape from Delhi and returned home to save her life. After reaching Fatehpur, she narrated the entire ordeal to her husband. Even after her return, Fiza Khatoon continued to threaten and intimidate her. The victim approached the police and filed a complaint, following which a case was registered, and further legal action was initiated.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. The first subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. 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. Another primary category selected is- Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory selected is- Attacked for Hindu identity. In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and the tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. The other sub-category selected here is - Attacked for refusal to convert. When there is pressure, threat or coercion employed upon the Hindu victim to convert to a different religion, in several cases, the victim refuses to succumb to the pressure/threats. Once the victim refuses, the perpetrator proceeds to attack/assault the victim owing to his/her refusal to convert. In such cases, the pressure/threat/intimidation/coercion/violence itself is driven by animosity towards the victim’s Hindu faith. The violence, then, is another hate crime driven by the victim’s refusal to abandon his professed faith, Hinduism, and convert to the religion of a non-Hindu perpetrator. Since the victim’s faith is at the heart of the pressure to convert and the ensuing violence towards the victim, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case bears clear markers of a religiously motivated hate crime as it involved deliberate grooming, manipulation, and coercive attempts aimed at forcing a Hindu woman to abandon her faith and convert to Islam. The sequence of events demonstrates how the victim was gradually targeted through calculated social engineering that exploited trust and emotional vulnerability in order to place her in a situation where religious conversion could be imposed upon her. The initial stage of the incident involved a pattern of grooming and manipulation. The accused woman systematically cultivated a relationship with the victim by frequently visiting her home and presenting herself as someone in distress who required financial assistance. By narrating stories about her personal hardships and gaining the victim’s sympathy, she succeeded in building trust and extracting money from the Hindu woman. This gradual process of emotional manipulation allowed the accused to establish influence over the victim and create a situation where the victim would feel comfortable accompanying her outside her familiar surroundings. The manipulation escalated when the accused persuaded the victim to travel to Delhi under the pretext of a trip. Once the victim was taken away from her home environment and support network, she was brought to the residence of a Muslim man, where the coercive phase of the incident began. In this unfamiliar setting, the victim was pressured to convert to Islam and enter into a Nikah with the man. The demand that she abandon her religion and marry a Muslim man demonstrates a clear attempt at proselytisation through coercive means. The victim’s refusal to convert triggered further intimidation and harassment. She was subjected to threats and blackmail and was prevented from leaving freely, effectively placing her under wrongful confinement. The use of intimidation and restriction of movement illustrates how pressure was applied to break her resistance and compel her to accept religious conversion against her will. Such tactics reveal that the objective of the perpetrators was not merely to arrange a marriage but to force the victim to renounce her Hindu identity and adopt a different religious framework. The continued threats even after the victim managed to escape and return to her home further demonstrate the persistence of the coercion. The intimidation served as a tool to instil fear and maintain pressure on the victim so that she might eventually submit to the demand for conversion. This pattern shows how the perpetrators sought to use psychological pressure and harassment as instruments of religious coercion. The incident, therefore, reflects a clear pattern of predatory proselytisation in which a Hindu woman was first groomed and manipulated, then isolated from her support system, and subsequently subjected to threats and confinement in an attempt to compel her to convert and marry under Islamic religious practices. The violence in this case manifested not through fatal assault but through intimidation, confinement, and threats directed at the victim because of her Hindu identity and her refusal to renounce her faith. Given that the case involved grooming and manipulation designed to facilitate religious conversion, sustained harassment and coercion to compel the victim to abandon her faith, and intimidation directed at her for resisting these demands, it meets the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime. Accordingly, it has been recorded in the Hinduphobia Tracker database under predatory proselytisation and attacks targeting individuals for their Hindu identity. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the date of an incident based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported in the media. In the present case, media reports did not specify the exact date when the victim first came into contact with the accused. However, the reports clearly stated that the victim was taken to Delhi on 18 February 2026. Accordingly, this date has been selected as the indicative incident date for the purposes of documentation. This date is recorded strictly for archival and tracking purposes.