Muslim youth poses as a Hindu, rapes and impregnates Hindu woman, then forces her to marry him and abort the unborn child
Katni, Madhya Pradesh, India 
17 September, 2023
Case Summary
From the Katni region of Madhya Pradesh, a Muslim youth named Salman befriended a Hindu girl by hiding his religious identity and introducing himself to the girl as Kushawa, a Hindu. He later established a relationship with her and forced her to be in sexual relations with him. He kept on forcefully sexually exploiting her for months. The victim girl came to know about the original identity of the accused from her relatives. She was five months pregnant at that time. On confronting, the accused assaulted the girl, aborted the five-month-old unborn, buried the foetus in a deserted location and threatened her with death if she did not marry him. The girl along with her family members reached the Katni police station on September 18, 2023, and lodged a police complaint against the accused. The state police booked the accused under sections 374, 506, and 34 of the Indian Penal Code and arrested him.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
Two distinct elements in this particular case demonstrate that the Muslim perpetrator committed the crime while harbouring a bias against the Hindu faith. The first component that proves that the Muslim man specifically targeted the woman based on her religion is that he pretended to be a Hindu to deceive the Hindu woman. 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 second component in this case which makes it worthy of being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime is that he forced her to convert to Islam and marry him against her will. 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. The relationship in such cases is mostly 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. In such cases, 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. Thirdly, what makes this case worthy of being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime is that the Muslim perpetrator starts inflicting torture on the Hindu woman once she refuses to accede to his conversion demands. 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.
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
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
