Hindu woman and minor daughter lured, raped, and pressured for conversion by Muslim cleric; victims held captive and forced to wear burqa

Case ID : e274a14 | Location : Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 20 March, 2025

Case ID : e274a14

Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, India

20 March, 2025

Hindu woman and minor daughter lured, raped, and pressured for conversion by Muslim cleric; victims held captive and forced to wear burqa

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Conversion of minor

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman and her 10-year-old daughter were lured under the guise of occult healing and abducted by a Muslim exorcist, Saqir Hussain. During her captivity, the woman was repeatedly raped, held hostage along with her minor daughter, and subjected to sustained pressure to convert to Islam. The accused also forced both victims to wear burqas, offer namaz, and attempted to impose an Islamic identity upon them by compelling the minor girl to address him as "Abbu" and refer to her mother as "Ammi." The case came to light on 27 May 2025, when the victim's husband, a resident of a village under Bilsi police station, lodged a complaint stating that Saqir Hussain, a resident of Risauli, had lured away his wife and 10-year-old daughter. According to the victim, the accused had first gained the family's trust by claiming he could cure their mentally challenged son through tantra-mantra and occult practices. After taking money from the family in the name of treatment, he gradually established contact with them. Later, while the woman and her daughter were travelling to her parental home, the accused offered them a lift and abducted them. The accused took the woman and her daughter to a secluded house in the Sidhpura area of Kasganj district, where they were held captive. The victim stated that Saqir Hussain repeatedly raped her while threatening to kill her daughter if she resisted. During their confinement, the accused forced both victims to wear burqas and offer namaz and continuously pressured the woman to convert to Islam. He also compelled the minor girl to call him "Abbu" and address her mother as "Ammi." Acting on surveillance inputs, the police traced the accused approximately eight days after the complaint was registered. As the police closed in on him, Saqir Hussain abandoned the woman and her daughter by the roadside and fled. The victims were rescued safely, and the accused was subsequently arrested. Following the woman's statement and the evidence collected during the investigation, the police invoked charges relating to kidnapping, rape, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation, assault, and provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act before filing a chargesheet against the accused. On 20 July 2026, Special Judge (Fast Track Court/Women Crimes) Neha Garg convicted Saqir Hussain after considering the evidence and witness testimonies presented during the trial. The court sentenced him to five years' rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹50,000 under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, along with another five years' rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹50,000 for kidnapping, rape, and other related offences, resulting in a total sentence of 10 years' rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹1 lakh. The court directed that all sentences would run concurrently and that the period already spent in judicial custody would be set off against the sentence. Judicial authorities stated that this marked the first conviction under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act in Budaun district.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: - Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category selected is: - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being: - Rape and sexual assault/harassment and 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 sub-category relevant 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu woman and her minor daughter were lured under the guise of exorcism by a Muslim exorcist. By pretending to be a spiritual healer, he gained access to vulnerable women who were likely seeking help or relief from personal problems. This form of deception represents a gross abuse of religious trust, where spiritual authority is weaponised for coercion, exploitation, and conversion. Such manipulation in the name of exorcism reflects a serious breach of trust and highlights a troubling misuse of religion for personal gain. In this case, the trust given to religious figures, especially in smaller or more traditional settings, was misused for acts of sexual violence and religious conversion, making the situation deeply exploitative. The sexual exploitation of the Hindu woman in this case was not random but systematically orchestrated through religious deception and manipulation. The use of spiritual pretexts allowed him to bypass rational scrutiny and build emotional control over the victim, which he then used to push her toward renouncing her faith. It is further important to note here that the victim's daughter m 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. Furthermore, she was pressured for religion conversion and was raped by the accused. Her minor daughter was also kept hostage. Here, rape and the minor daughter were used as tools to engineer religious conversion. By taking her away, he isolated her from her cultural roots and the support system she had. This, combined with the kidnapping of the minor daughter and sexual violence, was an effort to psychologically break down the victim, where her only option is to accede to the accused's conversion demands. Thus, rape and torture of her minor daughter were not just acts of physical violence but a tool of religious domination, aimed at subjugating her into submission. The act of forcing her to wear a burqa was not incidental or situational but formed part of a deliberate and structured process of enforced religious assimilation during captivity. It functioned as an imposed identity marker, stripping away her visible Hindu identity and replacing it with an externally imposed Islamic appearance. This was used as a method of psychological conditioning, ensuring that her outward expression aligned with the perpetrator’s religious framework while she remained under control. The imposition of religious dress in such a coercive environment goes beyond clothing; it becomes a tool of identity suppression and behavioural control. Such enforced adoption of religious attire under duress reflects a systematic attempt at identity erasure consistent with coercive conversion practices. The plan to change her name was not an isolated act but part of a broader pattern to alienate her from her Hindu identity. Renaming is a symbolic form of religious and cultural erasure after conversion. It is a commonly employed tactic in cases of forced religious conversion to sever all links with the victim’s original faith and community. These 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. Thus, within such frameworks, converting a non-believer is not just desirable but perceived as a moral obligation. 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. Disclaimer: Media reports state that the victim's husband filed a complaint on March 21, 2025, stating that her wife and daughter had been taken away by the accused, although no exact date is mentioned as to when the victim came into contact with the accused. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—March 21, 2025—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on June 29, 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.