Minor Hindu girl lured, raped and pressured for religious conversion and nikah by Muslim man; forced to wear burqa
Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, India 
1 September, 2025
Case Summary
In Baraut, Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, a minor Hindu girl was harassed, raped and blackmailed for religious conversion and nikah (Islamic marriage) by a Muslim man named Hashim. He made her wear a burqa and recorded obscene videos of her. According to the victim, the accused was her neighbour and had been stalking and harassing her for a long time. He even approached her while she was at school. When she rejected his proposal, the accused first lured her by threatening to commit suicide and then trapped her in a relationship. He called a friend to bring a burqa and forcibly made her wear it. He then took her to a house where he brutally raped her by threatening to kill her. During the incident, he also took obscene pictures of her, which he later used to blackmail her. After raping her, the accused kept pressuring the minor girl to undergo nikah with him. The victim rejected it by stating that she was a Hindu, but the accused responded by claiming that after the nikah, both would become Muslims. Despite repeated pressure, she refused to comply with his demand. Upon learning of the incident, Vishwa Hindu Yuva Vahini (a Hindu organisation) became involved, with its representative Alok Shastri stating that the case was not merely one of brutality but a case of love jihad. The police registered a case based on the victim's complaint, and a search operation was underway to nab the accused. As of the date of writing this report, the investigation was ongoing.
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 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. The second sub-category selected here is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being - Conversion of minor and Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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 second primary category selected here is - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Forced conversion before marriage, with the tertiary category being - Forced to wear hijab and Forced to do Nikah. 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 pressurizing 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 - Blackmailed to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is blackmailed to convert her religion, owing to her religious identity of being a Hindu. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim, however, there could be cases where the relationship is not consensual and the non-Hindu man starts blackmailing a Hindu woman to convert her religion. In these cases, it is often seen that the Hindu woman is blackmailed with intimate photos and/or videos, threats of harm to her or her family, threats of violence etc. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was harassed, raped and blackmailed for religious conversion and nikah (Islamic marriage) by the Muslim accused. It is important to note here that the victim 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 or even consenting to a relationship, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Such acts are not merely criminal in nature; they are ideologically charged, revealing religious prejudice and a calculated intent to alter the religious identity of a minor without her volition. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. The accused lured and manipulated her into a relationship. He forcibly made her wear a burqa and raped her. The imposition of the burqa on the Hindu victim added another layer to this erasure of her Hindu identity. By forcing her to wear a burqa, 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. Even threats and sexual violence served a dual purpose of physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention was to break the victim down emotionally, physically and spiritually, so that she could be converted for nikah. In Islam, marriage to a non-Muslim partner is prohibited, which was why she was pressured for religious conversion. This was not random violence; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. Furthermore, the use of intimate photos and videos to blackmail the victim into conversion and nikah shows how sexual exploitation was interwoven with religious coercion. This shows that the Muslim perpetrator specifically targeted the Hindu victim for sexual exploitation and religious conversion, and when the victim refused to comply, he resorted to threats and blackmail to make her comply. These threats were not random acts of violence but directly tied to her refusal to give up her Hindu faith. 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. Therefore, religious conversions, even of minors, are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. 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 Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when the victim’s ordeal began. However, in this case, the report does not provide specific details regarding when the accused trapped the victim. Therefore, for documentation purposes, the date of the incident has been recorded as the date it was reported in the media - September 2, 2025.
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 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
