Hindu woman kidnapped, forcibly converted, raped, and tortured by Muslim man and his family

Case ID : f664548 | Location : Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 5 April, 2024

Case ID : f664548

Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India

5 April, 2024

Hindu woman kidnapped, forcibly converted, raped, and tortured by Muslim man and his family

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Forced conversion before marriage

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Case Summary

A young Hindu woman was forcibly converted and subjected to months of abuse in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh. The victim, a resident of the Pihani Kotwali area, filed a petition in court after the police initially refused to register her complaint. Following the court’s directive, a case was registered against seven accused individuals. The ordeal began on April 06, 2024, when the woman went to Majhiya village to buy medicine. There, she encountered Farid, a resident of Lahna, who offered her water laced with an intoxicating substance. After losing consciousness, she was taken to a brick kiln in Nir Bahar, where she was forcibly converted and married against her will. The accused later took her to Nangloi in Delhi and Rohtak in Haryana, where she was subjected to nearly ten months of sexual exploitation. Three months ago, while being transported back to Nir Bahar, the accused attempted to kill her by pushing her into a canal at Kullhi Bridge. However, she managed to escape and found her way back to her father’s house. When she approached the police, they refused to file her complaint, forcing her to seek justice through the court. Based on the court’s order, a case was registered against Farid, Farakke, his wife Shrimati, Nabi, Chhote, Munna, and Shamim under charges of forced conversion, sexual abuse, assault, and caste-based slurs. Inspector Sanjay Tyagi confirmed that an investigation had begun into the matter.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first subcategory under this is: Forced conversion before marriage. 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 subcategory under this is: Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary category under this is: Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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. Another category in this case is: Hate speech against Hindus. The subcategory under this: Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem out of inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith, therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. This case has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker because it demonstrates in clear terms how a Hindu woman was deliberately targeted for her religious identity. The chain of events was not simply a matter of crime or personal enmity but part of a calculated effort to weaken and erase the victim’s Hindu self. From the very beginning, when she was deceived with drugged water and carried away from her village, the intention was to strip her of control over her body and faith. The forced conversion and marriage carried out soon after were designed to sever her connection to her Hindu roots and to bind her permanently to a religious identity she did not choose. Her ordeal in Delhi and Haryana was not only a story of captivity and abuse but also one of relentless pressure to submit to religious demands. Over ten months, she faced repeated sexual exploitation that went hand in hand with her forced conversion. The purpose of such sustained abuse was not just physical domination but also psychological breaking, to ensure that she could no longer live as a Hindu woman with dignity or independence. The attempt to kill her by pushing her into a canal further shows the intensity of the hatred; when compliance could not be fully secured, her life itself was deemed expendable. The cruelty of the perpetrators did not stop at physical violence. The use of caste-based slurs and constant humiliation underscored how her Hindu identity was at the centre of the crime. These words and actions revealed that the attack was not against her as an individual alone but against her identity as a Hindu, an identity the perpetrators viewed with hostility and sought to degrade. This case represents Hinduphobia in its rawest form. The woman was treated as a target because she was Hindu, and every stage of her abuse, from abduction to forced conversion, from sexual violence to attempted murder, was tied to that fact. Her suffering stands as both an attack on her personal freedom and an attack on the collective dignity of the Hindu community, whose identity continues to be undermined through such acts of hatred.