Mohammad Adil poses as Aditya Yadav to deceive a 19-year-old Hindu student

Case ID : 0b672dd | Location : Satna, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 8 July, 2024

Case ID : 0b672dd

Satna, Madhya Pradesh, India

8 July, 2024

Mohammad Adil poses as Aditya Yadav to deceive a 19-year-old Hindu student

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Satna district, Madhya Pradesh, a case emerged involving Mohammad Adil, who posed as Aditya Yadav to deceive a 19-year-old B.Com student from Indira College. Adil lured the girl into a relationship and had her sign a live-in relationship affidavit in November 2023. Subsequently, Adil's parents pressured the girl's parents to convert their religion. The girl's parents discovered her involvement with Adil about 15 days prior when they noticed her frequent phone conversations. On July 9, the girl went missing after leaving for an exam. Upon investigation, her friend revealed that Aditya Yadav was actually Adil Khan. Bajrang Dal workers intervened, bringing the case to the police. The police registered a case against Adil and his parents under Section 3 (5) of the BNS 2023 and Sections 3 and 4 of the Religious Freedom Act 2021.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This particular case has been classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under two prime categories of the tracker because of the various distinct components that demonstrate the perpetrator's bias against the Hindu faith and their deliberate attempt to alienate the victims from their Hindu identity. The first category which has been chosen is 'hate crimes against Hindu women in relationship' under which the sub-category selected, as per case details, is 'man pretends to be Hindu'. 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 category under which this case has been placed is 'predatory proselytisation' and the sub-category chosen 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. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. 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. What gives this case a distinct religious angle is that firstly, the Muslim perpetrator actively hid his religion and pretended to be a Hindu to ensnare the Hindu woman. This itself is a clear manifestation of bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. Further, he tried to coerce the victim's family to convert to Islam. This proves that the Muslim perpetrator had purposely singled out a Hindu woman and that his ultimate aim was to alienate the victim and her family for their professed faith, which is Hinduism and convert them to Islam. Since the motivating factor of the crime was the religious identity of the victims and the intention of disenfranchising them from it, the case has been categorised as a hate crime.