Hindu villagers and relatives pressured and offered inducements for religious conversion by Muslim convert
Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, India 
8 July, 2025
Case Summary
In Gadanpur village of Mainpuri district, Uttar Pradesh, many Hindu villagers were pressured for religious conversion by offering inducements by a Muslim man named Nivajilal Prajapati. Besides villagers, his own family members accused the Muslim convert of harassing them and pressuring them to adopt Islam. According to reports, a retired teacher named Nivajilal Prajapati, who was born into a Hindu family but adopted Islam about eight years ago. Following his conversion to Islam, he began pressuring other Hindu villagers, including his own family members, to convert to Islam. It has been stated that he was offering money for conversion. The matter came to the attention of the police after his own relatives approached the authorities, prompting a visit by officials and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) workers, who staged a protest outside his residence. His own family members also complained to the police that the accused is pressuring them to convert to Islam. Furthermore, the Muslim accused had also built a grave for his late wife inside his house and even constructed his own grave adjacent to hers and placed an Islamic religious sheet over her burial site. When the police conducted a search of his house, several Islamic religious items were recovered, including a prayer mat, a cap, and a photograph of Nivajilal wearing Muslim attire. Villagers, including Man Singh Prajapati and Udayveer Shakya, stated that not only has Nivajilal been observing Islamic practices, but his children also offer namaz at the local mosque. A Muslim man named Hasan Khan also reiterated that the accused had converted to Islam. However, when confronted, Nivajilal denied that he has converted and claimed to be a follower of the Kabirpanth tradition, which permits the burial of the dead, although not widely practised. He has also accused some of his relatives of attempting to defame him due to a land dispute. As of the date of writing this report, the accused was arrested by the police while the investigation was ongoing. Police also stated that no victim has yet come forward to say he has been converted.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: - Predatory Proselytisation. Within in, the sub-category selected is: - Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. 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 Hindu villagers were offered money and inducements for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Nivajilal Prajapati. This was further corroborated by his own relatives, who stated that they, too, were being pressured to convert to Islam by the accused. Offering incentives to encourage conversion, particularly in rural areas where economic vulnerability is high, shows that these incentives are not acts of kindness or charity. Instead, they are calculated moves to exploit vulnerable Hindus because of their religion. By providing inducements to Hindus to change their faith, the accused was effectively blackmailing those who might have been desperate for assistance. Such instances are seen in many cases where members of the Abrahamic faith target socially and economically vulnerable Hindus to further their agenda of religious conversions. This form of coercion strips people of their agency and dignity and enforces forced conversions. In such cases, the Hindu victim is targeted not for who they are individually, but because of what they represent religiously. These are not random or isolated incidents, but rather cases deeply rooted in religious animosity towards Hindu victims While the accused is an adult and he is free to change his religion, converting other people by pressuring them or offering inducements is what makes this a hate crime. In such cases, the conversions are not happening through a genuine change of heart but through targeted deception and material coercion directed at the Hindu community. 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 conversion, regardless of the methods used to achieve it. This results in deception, manipulation, harassment, and inducements often being used as a method of conversion. 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. Furthermore, it is important to note that the accused was claiming to be a follower of Kabirpanth to justify the construction of graves in his home. While burial does exist in Kabirpanthi traditions, it is not widely followed, and cremation often remains the norm. Additionally, during the search of his home, many items related to Islam were found, including a prayer mat, Islamic religious cloth (chadar), and a photograph of him in Muslim attire wearing a skull cap, clearly indicating he was a practising Muslim. Multiple villagers, including a Muslim man, reiterated the same thing: the accused is a Muslim, and he also visits the mosque every Friday and follows Islamic customs, confirming his religious identity. The police have stated that no individual has come forward yet to say they were converted. But this completely ignores the social reality of tightly knit communities of rural India, where even the suspicion of religious conversion, especially to a non-Hindu faith, can lead to immediate social boycott and ostracisation from the community. Thus, victims who were converted, even under duress, often refuse to speak out due to fear of social boycott and loss of livelihood. Therefore, the absence of any formal victim testimony cannot be taken as an indicator of the absence of coercion or wrongdoing.
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
