Hindu girl manipulated and coerced into converting and marrying a Muslim man

Case ID : f6647e3 | Location : Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 2 March, 2025

Case ID : f6647e3

Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India

2 March, 2025

Hindu girl manipulated and coerced into converting and marrying a Muslim man

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Victim says she was brainwashed/groomed

Forced conversion before marriage

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Raipur, Chhattisgarh, a Hindu girl was manipulated and coerced into converting and marrying a Muslim man, Hasan Ali. The case took a dramatic turn after two contradictory videos of the victim surfaced, raising serious concerns. Initially, the 22-year-old girl released a video claiming that she had willingly left her home and married Hasan Ali, urging the police not to harass his family. However, another video soon went viral, in which the girl revealed the truth. She alleged that Hasan Ali had deceived her, lured her to meet him, and then subdued her using an intoxicating substance. Under his influence, she was forcibly married and pressured into making the first video in which she falsely stated that the marriage was consensual. The victim submitted a formal complaint and an affidavit at the police station, detailing the coercion she faced. Despite this, no FIR was registered until March 3, 2025.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added under the prime category- Predatory Proselytisation. Under this, the first 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 selected here is- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the first sub-category selected is- Forced conversion after 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. 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. The second sub-category selected is- Brainwashed and/or groomed and within this the tertiary category chosen is- Victim says she was brainwashed/groomed. 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. This case is a disturbing instance of coercion and forced conversion, where a Hindu girl was allegedly trapped, harassed, and pressured into changing her faith and marrying against her will. While she initially claimed to have married of her own accord, she later revealed that she was called to meet Hasan Ali, drugged, and brought under his control. She stated that he forcibly married her and coerced her into making a video defending him. Her testimony exposed the sinister tactics used to manipulate and force her into conversion under duress. This constitutes a religiously motivated hate crime as such actions are driven by intolerance towards the victim's religious identity and aim to coerce them into abandoning their faith, often accompanied by threats, violence, or other forms of intimidation.