Hindu woman deceived and pressured to convert by Muslim man; sexually exploited for over 10 years

Case ID : e275164 | Location : Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 12 August, 2015

Case ID : e275164

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

12 August, 2015

Hindu woman deceived and pressured to convert by Muslim man; sexually exploited for over 10 years

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

In the Sadar Cantt area of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived, sexually exploited for over ten years by a Muslim man named Salman. He also physically assaulted her and pressured her for religious conversion. According to the victim, the accused ran a mobile shop in the Sadar Cantt area, where the accused befriended her using a false identity. Their friendship gradually developed into a relationship, during which the woman was subjected to continuous financial and physical exploitation. Salman sexually exploited her for over 10 years. He frequently spoke to her about life and death and used emotional manipulation to maintain control over her. When she eventually pressed him for marriage, Salman refused and told her to first convert to Islam. When she refused conversion, the accused physically assaulted her, pressuring her to abandon her faith and threatened to kill her if she did not comply. The victim lodged a complaint on August 13, 2025, after which Salman was arrested by the police. However, the accused's family openly threatened the victim, declaring that once the accused was released, they would not spare her. The victim, weeping and distraught, approached the Vishwa Hindu Raksha Parishad (Hindu organisation) and recounted her ordeal to the organisation’s leaders. The Hindu organisation assured her of assistance and stated that such cases of deceit, forced conversion and violence were increasingly being reported to their helpline.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first subcategory under this is - Forced conversion before marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. 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, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. 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 the situations, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurising the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. The second sub-category selected here 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 third subcategory under this is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - Rape and sexual assault/harassment. In our database, we have not added incidents where women have converted to another religion of their free will and no allegations of forced/involuntary conversion have been made. However, there are certain cases of conversion where the consent itself is a result of the brainwashing or grooming of a minor by the non-Hindu perpetrator trying to victimise a woman for her Hindu religious identity. The phenomenon of grooming points to non-Hindu perpetrators identifying their Hindu victims’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them over months and sometimes years, to extract the supposed ‘consent’ in order to convert their religion. In most cases of grooming, the victims are minors or the grooming started when the victim was a minor. In other cases of grooming, the non-Hindu perpetrator brainwashes and grooms a minor victim to extract their trust and then proceeds to rape them repeatedly with the intent of converting them to their faith. It is pertinent to understand here that when the victim is a minor, the ‘consent’ to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult itself is redundant – addressed by POCSO. While every case of conversion of a minor and incidents of establishing a physical relationship with a minor by an adult is a crime, for the purpose of this database, a case would be considered a hate crime only if there is a distinct religious angle to the grooming. For example, in the UK, if a Hindu minor is targeted by Pakistani grooming gangs, it would be considered a hate crime because the victims are specifically targeted owing to their non-Muslim religious identity with the perpetrators being Muslim. In other cases, if a Hindu minor is brainwashed into entering a physical relationship with the non-Hindu adult perpetrator and the family alleges grooming/brainwashing of the minor to convert her religion, it would form a part of this database. If the victim is a Hindu adult, the case would form a part of this database only if the victim herself says that she was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. However, if the victim is deceased (murdered or otherwise), the case would form a part of this database if her family/friends provided testimony that the victim was brainwashed/groomed to convert her religion. Since these crimes have a distinct religious angle where the victim is being targeted owing to her Hindu religious identity, these cases are considered a hate crime. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu woman was deceived, sexually exploited and pressured for religious conversion by a Muslim man. The accused deceived her into a relationship using a false identity. This act of deception was not random; it was a calculated effort to exploit the woman’s trust, religious beliefs and cultural norms. The deception was designed to break down her natural safeguards as a Hindu woman and make her vulnerable to long-term manipulation. This was done with the intent of targeting her precisely because of her Hindu religious identity, making the act not simply personal exploitation but an attack rooted in religious hostility. The deliberate grooming and manipulation involved, combined with the exploitation and pressure to convert, establish this as a religiously motivated crime. Furthermore, the accused sexually exploited her for more than ten years, during which financial and emotional manipulation were also used to maintain dominance. When the victim pressed for marriage, he physically assaulted her and threatened to kill her if she did not convert. In the Islamic faith, a marriage is deemed illegitimate if the non-Muslim partner does not convert to Islam. Owing to this doctrinal prerequisite, she was pressured to convert before marriage. In this case, sexual exploitation and physical assault were used as manipulative tactics intended to induce conversion. They serve a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention is to break the victim down, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she can be converted. This is not random violence; it is systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. 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 being dehumanised till they convert. 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: The victim stated that she was sexually exploited for about 10 years, though no exact date or month is provided. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—August 13, 2015—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on August 24, 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.