Minor Dalit Hindu girl pressured to convert to Islam, subjected to rape and death threats on refusal by Muslim man
Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
24 August, 2025
Case Summary
In Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, a minor Dalit Hindu girl was pressured and harassed by a Muslim man named Shoaib Khan to convert to Islam and marry him. Even the accused’s parents acted as his accomplices in the crime. The victim was subjected to rape and was threatened with death when she refused to convert. According to media reports, the incident took place in a village under the Lalauli police station area. The police registered a case against Shoaib Khan, his father, Nafees Khan, and his mother, and began an investigation. The Hindu victim stated that Shoaib Khan of the same village had been harassing her for a long time and used to molest her by blocking her way. The victim’s family had remained silent as her father was old and disabled. However, on the evening of 25th August 2025, when the girl went towards the garden, the accused stopped her and pressured her to convert to Islam and marry him (Nikah). When the Hindu girl refused, the accused raped her and fled after threatening to kill her. Terrified, the minor returned home and informed her family about the ordeal. Following this, the victim's family went to the accused’s house to complain. However, they were abused, chased away, and threatened by the accused and his parents. On the complaint of the victim’s mother, police registered a case under Sections 74, 64(1), 352, and 351(2) of the BNS, Sections 3 and 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012, Section 3(2) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and Sections 3 and 5(3) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act 2021. Subsequently, the accused was arrested on 8th September 2025. During the arrest, he opened fire at the police and was injured when the police retaliated.
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. In this case, it is important to note that the victim was a minor Dalit Hindu girl. Being a minor made her vulnerable and immature, and therefore more easily coerced and threatened. The Muslim perpetrator, Shoaib Khan, acted with full awareness of her vulnerability and deliberately targeted her for religious conversion. By attempting to compel her to abandon Hinduism and accept Islam, he demonstrated religious animosity. This was not a random act but one driven by hatred for the victim’s Hindu identity and the perpetrator’s intent to erase it. The act of forcing a Hindu individual to convert to Islam and then proposing marriage is not just a random crime, but a religiously motivated hate crime. The perpetrator’s actions showed a determination to strip the victim of her religious autonomy and faith. Forcing any individual to abandon their religious identity and accept another faith is motivated by hostility towards that religion. In this case, the demand for marriage (nikah) after conversion was a way to entirely subjugate the Hindu victim, destroy her autonomy, and place her under the complete dominance of the Muslim perpetrator. Such actions reveal hostility towards Hindus as a community and target them through vulnerable individuals, especially women and girls. When the Hindu girl resisted these coercive attempts and refused to convert, she was subjected to rape and death threats. In such circumstances, sexual violence is more than a physical crime; it becomes an instrument of religiously charged oppression. This transforms the act of rape into a form of targeted hate‑driven sexual violence against a Hindu girl because of her identity. By doing this, the Muslim perpetrator sought to terrorise the Hindu victim into abandoning her religion and used rape as a form of punishment for not fulfilling his demands. This instance glaringly demonstrates the religiously motivated nature of the crime. Following this, when the victim's family went to the accused’s home to complain about the incident, they were subjected to verbal abuse, threats and were driven away by the accused’s parents. This demonstrated that the parents supported the actions of the accused, reinforcing the case as a religiously motivated crime. Given that this case meets multiple parameters of a religiously motivated crime, it is being added to the hate crime database.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 1
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Case sub-judice
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
