Minor Hindu girl deceived and sexually exploited by Muslim man feigning Hindu identity in Surat, Gujarat
Surat, Gujarat, India 
23 March, 2026
Case Summary
In the Ichchapore area of Surat, Gujarat, a minor Hindu girl was deceived into a relationship and sexually exploited by a 23-year-old Muslim man named Mohammad Sajid, who posed as a Hindu. According to reports, the accused, Mohammad Sajid, deliberately concealed his identity to entrap the minor Hindu girl, who was a Class 12 student. He posed as a Hindu man named Abhishek Gupta, using a fake Aadhaar card, by editing it through a mobile application. He used this fabricated Hindu identity to gain the trust of the minor Hindu girl and lure her into a relationship. Once trust was established, he took her to a hotel where he sexually assaulted her. During the course of the exploitation, he also gave the victim a mobile phone, which he used to obtain explicit photographs of her, further extending control and coercion over her. When the victim’s family discovered about their relationship and attempted to intervene, Sajid escalated the situation by issuing death threats against the victim's brother, creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. The accused was also preparing to flee to Bihar with the victim, with the intention to evade legal consequences. However, the police acted promptly and apprehended him before he could escape. All five accused were produced before a court and remanded to four days of police custody. Investigators confirmed the use of digital tools to forge and manipulate official documents and indicated that further details were likely to emerge during interrogation. The investigation revealed that the crime was not carried out in isolation but involved the active participation of multiple accomplices. Four additional individuals were arrested for aiding the primary accused at different stages. Two of them assisted Sajid while he was evading arrest, helping him remain in hiding. Another individual functioned as a mediator, facilitating communication and coordination between Sajid and the victim, including accompanying them to a hotel where the sexual assault took place. A fourth accomplice was directly involved in tampering with official identification documents, altering both Sajid’s identity and the victim’s age. The accused manipulated the Aadhaar details to show the minor as an adult, enabling hotel check-in and bypassing restrictions that would otherwise have raised suspicion.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is- Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary categories selected are- Name changed. 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 other sub-category selected is - Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary category here 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was lured and sexually exploited by a Muslim man named Mohammad Sajid, who pretended to be a Hindu. Firstly, the perpetrator deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with a Hindu girl. This itself is a clear manifestation of bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. By concealing his true identity, he exploited her trust, targeting her under false pretences. This indicates a premeditated intent to manipulate her based on her religious background. In cases like these, the tactic of adopting a false Hindu identity to manipulate and "ensnare" a Hindu individual is not just an act of personal betrayal but can also be interpreted as an expression of disdain or disregard for Hinduism and its customs that reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. Secondly, it is important to note here that the victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of getting into a relationship, consenting to sex or recognising such targeted deception. Additionally, any supposed consent given for a relationship is already considered invalid under the POCSO Act. The case also involved elements of coercion and blackmail, which significantly aggravated the severity of the crime. After establishing the relationship, the accused obtained explicit photographs of her. Such material created a mechanism for sustained control, as victims in these situations are often subjected to threats of exposure, intimidation, and continued exploitation. These exploitations were not random acts of crime; rather, they functioned as religiously motivated tools aimed at humiliating and dominating a Hindu girl because of her faith. The target was not the victim as an individual, but her Hindu identity. The specific focus on her Hindu identity in the commission of these acts highlights the religious hatred underlying the crime, making it a religiously motivated offence. This is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of religiously motivated hate crimes targeting Hindu women. The Hinduphobia tracker has documented multiple cases where non-Hindu men pretended to be Hindu to befriend Hindu women for sexual exploitation or religious conversion. For example, in Bahadarabad, Haridwar district, Uttarakhand, a Hindu woman was blackmailed and raped by a Muslim man named Iqbal, who had faked a Hindu identity to entrap her. In a similar case, from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived and sexually exploited by a Muslim man named Sufian, who impersonated a Hindu man on social media to lure her. In another case in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman, mother of a six-year-old child, was deceived, forcibly converted to Islam, and kept in captivity. The perpetrator, Ehsan Hussain, pretended to be Hindu and trapped her in a fabricated love affair, coerced her into abandoning her faith, renamed her Khushboo Khatun, and forcibly married her before relocating her to Chennai. These incidents collectively highlight a pattern in which Hindu girls are specifically targeted and lured under deliberate identity deception for nefarious purposes, underscoring a systematic hostility towards Hindu individuals and their religious beliefs. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim came into contact with the accused. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported by the media, 24 March 2026.
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
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
