Hindu woman deceived into marriage, forced to convert to Islam, eat beef, and wear burqa by Muslim man faking his identity
Jorhat, Assam, India 
15 August, 2025
Case Summary
In the Jorhat district of Assam, a Hindu woman was deceived into a romantic relationship and then into marriage by a Muslim man who had concealed his religious identity to trap the victim. After the marriage, she was forced to undergo religious conversion, compelled to eat beef, and made to wear a burqa. The victim is identified as Pooja Rai, while the accused is identified as Noor Rehman. According to news reports, Noor Rehman is a butcher by profession. He trapped Pooja Rai by pretending to be Hindu and marrying her. After marriage, Noor and his family forced her to convert to Islam, eat beef, and wear a burqa. When she resisted, she was continually subjected to physical and mental torture. After marriage, she subsequently became pregnant. Despite her condition, on 16th August 2025, Noor Rehman and his brother Suman brutally kicked her in the stomach, leaving her seriously injured. With the help of her family, she was admitted to Jorhat Medical College Hospital in a critical condition. Following this incident, based on a complaint by the victim’s family, the Titabar police arrested Noor Rehman and his brother. Even the local Hindu community expressed outrage after learning of the incident and demanded strict and exemplary punishment for the accused.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Man pretends to be Hindu. When a non-Hindu man pretends to be a Hindu to deceive a Hindu woman into a relationship, the act is seen as triggered by malafide intentions. In some cases, the woman eventually accepts the man’s original religious identity and converts after the man’s identity is revealed. These cases could be argued as cases of religious brainwashing and a result of the pressure a woman feels after getting into a relationship with a man. The woman, it can be argued, also changed her religious identity because of the stigma she believes she might face if she chooses to walk out of a deceptive relationship. However, for the purpose of documenting hate crimes, the cases in this subcategory are limited to those where there is explicit violence aimed at religious conversion against the wishes of the victim (force-feeding beef, blackmailing with intimate videos, rape on refusal to convert, etc), or if the woman herself complains of the man’s religious deception. In such cases, it is established that the deception of the non-Hindu man had a specific aim of religious conversion or targeting of the victim due to her Hindu religious identity, therefore, making it a religiously motivated hate crime. The other subcategory selected is- Forced conversion after marriage. The tertiary categories selected are- 'Forced to eat beef' and 'Forced to wear Hijab'. In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to Islam begins after marriage. In such cases, typically, two patterns emerge. First, when the relationship is consensual, and the religious identity of the perpetrator is known to the Hindu woman in the relationship. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither parties are required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert to Islam after marriage. The second is when the woman gets into a marriage with the man pretending to share her faith. Later, when the truth is revealed, the man starts pressuring the woman to convert her religion and give up her religious identity. In both situations, there is application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing, however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. The other subcategory selected is- Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat, are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though, it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The other subcategory selected is- Torture of family to force woman to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is forced to convert her religion. Several methods are used for such forced conversion. The non-Hindu man is often documented to issue threats and even employ violence. One of the ways used by such perpetrators is threatening and/or torturing the family members of the Hindu woman to pressure her to convert. The perpetrators in such cases issue threats to harm or torture the family of the woman. In some cases, there is also violence directed towards the family to force the Hindu woman to convert. Such crimes aim to blackmail the victim into changing her religion by inducing fear of harm to her family. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. In this case, the Hindu woman was deceived into a marriage by a Muslim man pretending to be Hindu. After this, she was pressured to convert to Islam by the perpetrator and his family. Firstly, the perpetrator's act of deception by hiding his Muslim identity and posing as a Hindu itself demonstrates a clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim’s religion. By hiding his true identity, the Muslim man manipulated the Hindu woman's trust and targeted her under false pretences, indicating a premeditated effort to exploit the woman based on her religious background. Additionally, the marriage legitimised the relationship in the eyes of the woman and the wider Hindu community. This constituted a direct violation of her right to informed consent regarding whom she chooses to marry, as well as an infringement upon her religious beliefs. Thus, the perpetrator’s deliberate decision to hide his religious identity strongly underscores the religious motive behind this crime. In such instances, identity concealment is not just a deceptive tactic for personal reasons but a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling and targeting. The Muslim accused was aware that the victim, being Hindu, would likely refuse his advances if she knew his real identity, and he circumvented this by lying, which directly points to a religiously driven intent. This deception reflects a larger pattern where Hindu women are specifically singled out using false identities, often with coercion or conversion in mind. Such targeted victimisation based on religion not only demonstrates a fundamental disregard for Hinduism but also exposes a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. After marriage, the Hindu victim was coerced to discard her faith and was compelled to convert to Islam. Forcing someone to renounce their religion lies at the heart of religious hatred. Such coercion is not a mere act of personal cruelty; it is an assault on the freedom of conscience and religious autonomy of the victim. This act revealed that the victim's Hindu identity was not accepted, and that her perpetrators sought not only to dominate her but to erase her very existence as a Hindu woman. Such actions are a result of deep-seated religious animosity towards the Hindu community and Hinduism. Furthermore, the act of forcing the victim to eat beef was another manifestation of religious hostility. In Hinduism, the cow is highly revered and its slaughter is considered a religious offence. Forcing a Hindu woman to consume beef is therefore not simply coercion, but an act of desecration, a direct affront to her values, faith, and culture. This was designed to humiliate her, to break her connection with her religion, and to discard the core of her Hindu identity. This action makes the religious motivation behind the crime very evident. The imposition of the burqa on the Hindu victim added another layer to this erasure of her Hindu identity. By forcing her to adopt it, the Muslim perpetrator attempted to strip her of her Hindu faith and impose foreign religious practices upon her. It was not merely about clothing: it symbolised the effort to overwrite her Hindu identity and forcibly assimilate her into practices of the Islamic faith. This again glaringly demonstrates the religiously motivated nature of the crime. When the Hindu victim refused to convert to Islam, she endured intense physical and mental torture by the Muslim perpetrator and his family. Refusal to abandon her faith was met with violence, showing clearly that her suffering stemmed from religious animosity. The brutality reached its peak when, despite her pregnancy, she was mercilessly assaulted. Being kicked in the stomach by the accused and his brother was not just an act of physical harm; it was the ultimate dehumanisation. It spoke of violent hatred, a willingness to extinguish both her life and the life of her unborn child, solely because she stood firm in her Hindu identity. Such instances of the use of violence and coercion to strip a Hindu individual of her Hindu faith showcase that the crime was driven by religious animosity towards Hinduism and the Hindu community. The fact that the Muslim perpetrator acted with the support of his family, who together forced the Hindu victim to convert and subjected her to torture, demonstrated that this was not an isolated act. Rather, it was a deliberate and calculated effort to sever her connection with her Hindu faith and impose Islam upon her. This made the crime not merely personal in nature but explicitly religiously motivated, rooted in hostility towards her identity as a Hindu woman. Given that this incident meets multiple parameters of a religiously motivated crime, it is being added to the hate crime database in the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: Media reports do not specify the exact date on which the victim’s ordeal began. They mentioned only one specific date – 16th August 2025 – when the Hindu woman was brutally assaulted, being kicked in the stomach by the Muslim perpetrator and his brother. This date is therefore being taken as the indicative date of the incident, even though media outlets reported the case on 19th August 2025. The Hinduphobia Tracker records the date when the victim’s suffering begins, rather than the date when it is reported by the media. Furthermore, media accounts confirmed that the woman was forced to convert by the Muslim perpetrator, Noor Rehman, and members of his family. However, they did not specify the total number of family members involved. Reports highlighted only Noor himself and his brother Suman. For the purpose of documentation, the number of perpetrators is therefore being recorded as ‘2’—referring specifically to Noor Rehman and his brother.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
