Hindu woman and her minor children lured and converted to Islam by Muslim man; accused part of Chhangur Peer's conversion racket

Case ID : e274f1b | Location : Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 16 July, 2025

Case ID : e274f1b

Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

16 July, 2025

Hindu woman and her minor children lured and converted to Islam by Muslim man; accused part of Chhangur Peer's conversion racket

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Family claims grooming

Case Summary

In Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman and her minor children were lured and converted to Islam by a Muslim man named Mohammad Afzal. According to the information available, Afzal was part of a conversion racket operated by Muslim Peer Chhangur Baba, known for carrying out unlawful and forced conversions of Hindus to Islam through coercion, deceit, financial incentives, threats, harassment, and manipulation. According to media reports, Afzal lured the Hindu woman into a relationship and subsequently converted her and her children to Islam. The woman's husband stated that Afzal trapped his wife, and both had then joined Chhangur’s religious conversion gang. The husband wrote a letter to the Police Commissioner and lodged a complaint. The woman's husband explained in the complaint that Afzal enticed his wife through social media. On 17th July 2025, the husband caught his wife with Afzal in their house. They were both together in a compromising situation, and the woman's minor daughter was in the same room. The Hindu woman's husband also said that Afzal used to present himself as a Hindu relative of his wife before him. However, he later discovered that Afzal was a Muslim. The Hindu husband, seeking protection, stated that Afzal wants to harm him and his family. He reiterated that Afzal was a member of Chhangur Peer’s conversion gang. Following this, a police investigation commenced, and the preliminary inquiry claimed that this was a personal matter between the husband and wife. It is pertinent to note that the Muslim accused was part of a larger religious conversion racket orchestrated by a Muslim Peer known as Chhangur Baba. The Uttar Pradesh ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) had recently dismantled this organised network, uncovering its systematic operation aimed at targeting and converting Hindu individuals, particularly women and minors, to Islam. According to the investigation, Chhangur Baba provided financial incentives to Muslim men to lure Hindu women, often under false identities by posing as Hindus, and then pressure them into conversion. Once converted, these women were married off through Nikah ceremonies arranged by Chhangur Baba himself. Authorities also discovered that Chhangur Baba had published a book titled Shijra-e-Tayyaba, intended as a manual to propagate Islam. The ATS investigation revealed that his network operated on a structured incentive model: Rs15–16 lakh was paid for converting Brahmin, Sikh, or Kshatriya women; Rs10–12 lakh for OBC women; and Rs8–10 lakh for those from other castes. He, along with his wife, was arrested on 5th July 2025. The ATS confirmed that the gang had received nearly Rs100 crore in foreign funds to facilitate these illegal conversions across India. Members of his own family were reportedly involved in the operation. The Hinduphobia Tracker has documented multiple cases involving Chhangur Baba. In all these cases, Hindu victims were religiously profiled, deliberately targeted because of their religious identity. They were forced to convert to Islam through the use of force, deception, harassment, incentives, and intimidation. In the first case, Chhangur encouraged a Muslim man named Meraj to lure a Hindu woman named Aarti by posing as a Hindu. Afterwards, Chhangur, along with Meraj, forcibly converted her to Islam and conducted her Nikah according to Islamic customs. Another case involved a Hindu man named Harjeet, who was forcibly converted to Islam by Chhangur. The accused had offered Harjeet incentives and subjected him to harassment and had filed false cases against him in an attempt to persuade him to convert to Islam. Similarly, in another case, in Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu man named Sanchit and his wife were lured to convert to Islam with incentives by the Muslim Peer Chhangur. Both victims were also subjected to death threats and were harassed with false cases for refusing to convert. Another such instance was reported in Faridabad, Haryana, where a minor Hindu girl was brainwashed and forcibly converted to Islam by her Muslim neighbours who were part of a Muslim gang run by the Muslim peer Chhangur. After her conversion, her Hindu identity was erased; she was given a Muslim name, compelled to wear a burqa, forced to perform Islamic rituals, and fed meat against her beliefs. She was horrifically exploited sexually, blackmailed using obscene videos, and pushed into prostitution. In another such case, a Hindu woman from Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man. The accused pretended to be Hindu and had manipulated and brainwashed her into converting to Islam. The victim had been missing since 2019. The accused was also linked to the Islamic cleric Peer Chhangur. In another such case, a Hindu woman named Rashmi (name changed) from Karnataka was trafficked to Saudi Arabia and subjected to years of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse as part of a systematic religious conversion racket operated under the influence of Islamic Peer Jalaluddin alias Chhangur Baba. Under false pretences of marriage and employment, the woman was entrapped, manipulated, and eventually transported across international borders. In another such case, in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was lured into a romantic relationship and subsequently married by a Muslim man named Tabish Asgar. The accused had posed as a Hindu youth while deceiving the woman into a relationship and married her as per Hindu rituals. After marriage, the accused exerted pressure on the victim to renounce Hinduism and adopt Islam, but was not successful. He then took her to Muslim Peer Chhangur alias Jalaluddin, who is known for converting several Hindus to Islam by use of force, deception, and coercion. There, she was also coerced and enticed with incentives to adopt Islam. In another case, in Ranipokhari, Uttarakhand, a young Hindu woman became the target of an organised Muslim conversion gang who attempted to forcibly convert her to Islam through online grooming, emotional pressure, and inducements. This conversion gang was connected to Chhangur Peer.

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 category selected is- 'Conversion of minor' and 'Family claims grooming'. 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. In this case, a Hindu woman was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man and subsequently pressured into converting to Islam. Ordinarily, this incident could fall under the “undecided” database, since the woman involved is an adult and, at first glance, it may be argued that she possessed the agency to make her own personal decisions about relationships and religion. However, in this case, the victim’s husband revealed that the accused was part of Chhangur Peer’s organised conversion racket — a criminal network that specifically religiously profiles Hindu women, entraps them through deceitful romantic involvement, and subsequently forces or manipulates them into adopting Islam. This admission fundamentally shifts how the case must be viewed. The conversion now cannot be presumed to stem from the woman’s independent choice, but instead fits into a pattern of targeted religious coercion, in which Hindu women are deliberately trapped, exploited, and pressured to abandon their faith. Because the accused belonged to a gang whose explicit agenda is to erode Hindu identity through deceit, inducements, blackmail, and threats, this incident is not an isolated personal matter, but part of a wider hate-driven conspiracy against Hindus. This involvement of an extremist religious conversion network clearly establishes religious animosity as the motive behind the crime. Therefore, despite the adult status of the victim, the case safely qualifies as a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus. The Chhangur Baba case is not merely an individual crime but a manifestation of a larger ideological campaign aimed at the gradual Islamisation of India. This agenda seeks to erode Hindu identity and alter the country's demographic and cultural fabric. Muslim extremists often harbour deep-seated animosity towards Hindus and view India as a Hindu collectivity that must be dismantled or subdued. The ideological roots of this mindset go back to the very basis of the Partition of India, which was that the Muslims believed that Islam was a nation unto itself, which could not survive with a Hindu collectivity like India. Historically, Islamic conquests have not always relied solely on military force; they have also operated through psychological coercion, forced conversions, and cultural erasure. This case reflects the continuation of that same mindset in modern forms. It is also concerning that the victims in this incident included minors. This fact alone underscores that genuine consent and a sincere change of conscience were absent from the outset. Minors, owing to their youth and lack of maturity, are exceptionally vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They do not fully grasp the profound consequences of changing their religion, and the Muslim perpetrator knowingly exploited this vulnerability. This case starkly illustrates the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion. It stands as a blatant act of religious hate. Targeting vulnerable minors from a particular community, in this instance, the Hindu community, demonstrates the religiously motivated nature of the act. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date on which the woman and her children were converted to Islam. The only indication, and the earliest reference, is that the husband found the Hindu woman and the Muslim accused together at their home on 17th July 2025. As Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when the victim’s ordeal began, rather than when it gets reported in the media, we are therefore using 17th July 2025 as the indicative date of the incident, though it was reported on August 4, 2025. Additionally, reports did not specify the total number of children the woman had; they only mentioned one minor daughter in particular. Therefore, for the purposes of documentation, we have adopted a conservative estimate and recorded the number of victims as '2', referring to the woman and her daughter.