Azam arrested for pretending to be Ajju and befriending minor Hindu girl, regularly raped her and recorded videos as blackmail
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India 
3 July, 2024
Case Summary
In Dehradun, Uttarakhand, a Muslim man named Azam befriended a minor Hindu girl from Sahaspur by posing as Ajju and then raped her. The victim lodged a police complaint and an FIR was registered on this basis. The accused has been arrested. The complaint revealed that in 2017, she was underage and studying in class 9 when Azam alias Ajju befriended her. The 22-year-old perpetrator then proceeded to sexually assault her regularly. He recorded explicit videos of her and used them to blackmail her. When she protested, he threatened to share the footage on social media. She remained quiet due to fear of public shame. The girl ultimately made the decision to file a complaint and narrated the entire ordeal after she arrived at the Sahaspur police station. The police apprehended the offender from his house near Mental Hospital Shankarpur after receiving a tip-off from an informer. He is the son of Jamshed Ali, a resident of Kedarwala. The cops recovered the obscene videos and photos of the complainant from his mobile phone and sent him to jail.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
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 religious motive of the crime is evident from the fact that the Muslim perpetrator hid his true identity to trap the Hindu victim. This itself is a clear manifestation of bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. The accused targeted the victim specifically owing to her religious identity and after that, continued to take advantage of her physically through threats and blackmailing. This targeted violence is a direct expression of hate and intolerance towards the victim's religion, hence this case has been classified as a religious hate crime. There is another thread in the case that takes prominence, in light of the victim being a minor. This is a case of grooming since the perpetrator gained the faith of the Hindu minor simply to sexually exploit the minor. 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.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
