Dalit Hindu girl harassed and pressured to do nikah by Muslim man in Madhya Pradesh

Case ID : e2752e4 | Location : Damoh, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 2 September, 2025

Case ID : e2752e4

Damoh, Madhya Pradesh, India

2 September, 2025

Dalit Hindu girl harassed and pressured to do nikah by Muslim man in Madhya Pradesh

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district, a Dalit Hindu girl was harassed and pressured to convert to Islam and marry in a Nikah ceremony by a Muslim man named Irfan Khan. He also attempted to abduct her by force. The incident came under the jurisdiction of Hindoria police station in Damoh district. The girl told the police that Irfan Khan had been harassing her for a long time and was pressuring her to marry him through a Nikah ceremony against her will. On 3rd September 2025, Irfan once again harassed her, tried to forcibly take her with him, and misbehaved with her. According to leaders of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Irfan was attempting to take the Dalit Hindu girl by force when members of their organisations intervened and rescued her. However, Irfan managed to escape. Bajrang Dal convenor Golu Chaubey stated that some Muslim women lived in a hut near the civil hospital in Hindoria and were involved in supporting such activities targeting Hindu women for forced conversion. A complaint regarding this matter was also lodged with the administration. Later that night, Hindoria police registered a case against Irfan and began an investigation, launching a search for the accused.

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- 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 incident clearly qualifies as a hate crime against a Hindu woman due to the religiously motivated nature of the offence. The Muslim perpetrator specifically targeted the victim because of her Hindu faith, attempting to coerce her into forced religious conversion and marriage through a Nikah ceremony, which is a formal Islamic marriage ritual. Under Islamic law, a Nikah cannot be conducted between a Muslim man and a non-Muslim woman unless the woman converts to Islam. Therefore, the insistence on performing a Nikah reveals the perpetrator's intent to strip the victim of her Hindu identity and force her to adopt Islam. The victim was subjected to prolonged harassment by the perpetrator, who pressured her over an extended period to convert to Islam and marry him in the Islamic ceremony. This sustained pattern of coercion underscores that the crime was not a random or isolated incident but a deliberate effort to impose religious conversion through intimidation and forced marriage. Such actions violate the victim’s fundamental rights, including her religious freedom and autonomy to choose her faith. Furthermore, the targeting of a Hindu woman with the specific aim of changing her religion and marrying her under religious conditions that require conversion indicates the offence was motivated by hostility towards her religion. This intent to alter her faith under duress and persistent harassment demonstrates that this was a clear case of a religiously motivated hate crime. Given that this case meets several parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it is being added to the hate crime database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the date when the victim’s ordeal began rather than when it is reported in the media. In this case, media reports have not specified the exact date when the harassment first started, only indicating that the latest harassment occurred on 3rd September 2025. Therefore, for documentation purposes, 3rd September 2025 is used as the indicative date of the incident.