Muslim man converts and marries minor Hindu girl, assaults her and leaves her when she turns 18

Case ID : f5a740a | Location : Chapra, Bihar, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 28 November, 2023

Case ID : f5a740a

Chapra, Bihar, India

28 November, 2023

Muslim man converts and marries minor Hindu girl, assaults her and leaves her when she turns 18

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to do Nikah

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Conversion of minor

Case Summary

From the Isuapur police station area of Chhapra in Bihar’s Saran district, 25-year-old Armaan Ali trapped 16-year-old Aarti Kumari who was her neighbour into a relationship after which he took her to Mumbai in 2021. He lied about her age to get married in court and then compelled her to become a Muslim and named her Tamanna. Notably, he left her when she turned eighteen. The victim also charged that the couple had a baby boy who lost his life from a poisoning injection a few days after his birth and blamed her spouse for his death. He started assaulting her as well as pressurised her to work as a labourer and snatched the thirty thousand rupees she had accumulated. She arrived at the police station along with her mother and father to submit a complaint against the perpetrator.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

Since this case meets at least one specific component of religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindu women, which is forced conversion before marriage, this case has been documented here. 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 ‘Niqah’, 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. Since the victim was a minor, there is an additional thread of grooming involved. 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. In this case, the perpetrator specifically married the minor and converted her religion to Islam. Since the victim was a minor, she had no agency to consent to the marriage or the change in faith. Further, the fact that the perpetrator left her when she turned 18 also shows that he specifically targeted the victim not only for her religious identity but also her age - making this case that of grooming. Since this case meets the criteria for a religiously motivated hate crime, it is being documented in the database.