Hindu woman threatened with acid attack, raped, forcefully converted to Islam and married off to Muslim man

Case ID : f6647b7 | Location : Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 3 March, 2025

Case ID : f6647b7

Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh, India

3 March, 2025

Hindu woman threatened with acid attack, raped, forcefully converted to Islam and married off to Muslim man

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In the Shajapur district in Madhya Pradesh, a Hindu woman belonging to the Dalit community was abducted by a Muslim man named Shakir Mansuri. He took her to his house, threatening to throw acid on her face. He then raped her and with the help of his brother Shahzad and Shahzad's wife Shanno, forced her to convert to Islam. The accused brought a Maulvi to their home and forcefully converted the Hindu victim to Islam and changed her name in the Aadhar card. She was given the name Yasmeen and married off to Shakir Mansuri. After the marriage, the Hindu woman gave birth to a daughter. Later, Shakir was diagnosed with cancer, due to which he was bedridden. On 18th June 2024, Shahzad came to Shakir's house to check on his health. Shahzad used the opportunity to rape the Hindu woman. He threatened her to have sexual relations with her or else he threatened that he would kill her and her daughter. On 20th December 2024, Shahzad and his wife Shanno came to the woman's house and beat her badly. The woman managed to escape and went back to her mother's house in Ujjain. The woman, after a while, filed a police complaint against Shahzad and his wife, Shanno. Another accused Shakir had already died due to cancer. The police registered a complaint under sections of rape, assault, SC/ST Act and MP Religious Freedom Act 2021.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been categorised as a religiously motivated hate crime under two prime categories of the tracker. The first is- Predatory Proselytisation. Under this, the sub-category selected is- Harassment, threat, 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. The second category under which this case has been placed is- Attack not resulting in death, and within this, the sub-category chosen is- Attacked for Hindu identity. In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. In this case, a Hindu woman was abducted, raped and forcefully converted to Islam before being married off to her abductor. She was tortured, beaten up and raped by her now husband's brother. The purpose of this torture was to coerce the victim into abandoning her faith and accepting Islam. The underlying motivation of predatory proselytisation, driven by animosity towards the victim's professed faith, was evident. The perpetrators used violence to pressure the girl into converting, with the central aim of separating her from her Hindu identity. Given that religion was the primary motivation, this case has been classified as a hate crime.