Hindu girl in Hardoi lured to Lucknow by Muslim youth posing as Hindu, raped and pressured to convert
Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India 
13 February, 2026
Case Summary
A Hindu girl from a village in Hardoi district, Uttar Pradesh, was lured away from her home, taken to Lucknow, confined in a room, raped and subjected to conversion pressure by Muslim youths, one of whom posed as a Hindu to gain the victim's trust. According to reports, one of the accused, Imran, concealed his Muslim identity and introduced himself to the Hindu girl as Shiv through her cousin sister, who provided her with his mobile number. Having gained her trust under his false Hindu identity, Imran lured her away from her home on the night of February 14, 2026, without her family's knowledge. Her father searched for her the following morning among neighbours and relatives but found no trace of her. Imran took the Hindu girl to Lucknow along with his associate Dilshad. Once there, she was confined in a room and denied her freedom. Both Imran and Dilshad raped her while she was confined. After subjecting her to rape, both perpetrators subjected her to sustained pressure to convert to Islam, compounding the physical and psychological trauma of the assault with religious coercion. The Hindu girl was unable to escape or seek help during the period of her confinement and was subjected to the combined trauma of rape, confinement, and conversion pressure before being recovered. The Hindu girl's father filed a First Information Report at Kasimpur police station on February 17, 2026, after his daughter left home on the night of February 14 without informing the family. During the investigation, police established that Imran had introduced himself to the Hindu girl as Shiv and had lured her away under his false Hindu identity. The Hindu girl subsequently gave a statement before the court detailing the full extent of what had been done to her. The advocates of both Imran and Dilshad filed bail applications before Additional District Judge Sunil Kumar Singh. The judge stated that the nature of the case was extremely serious and rejected both bail applications in view of the victim's statement, the available evidence, and the circumstances of the case.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category here for this case is "Man pretends to be Hindu". The tertiary categories here are "Name changed" and "Rape and/or murdered after Hindu woman finds out the real identity". 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. Another sub-category for this case 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 qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime on the basis that the Muslim accused deliberately concealed his Muslim identity and assumed a false Hindu identity to gain the trust of a Hindu girl. He lured her away from her home, took her to Lucknow, confined her in a room, raped her along with his associate, and subjected her to sustained conversion pressure in the aftermath of the assault. The deliberate assumption of the false Hindu name Shiv was the foundational act of the entire predatory operation. By presenting himself as a Hindu man through a carefully chosen Hindu name, Imran consciously and deliberately bypassed the Hindu girl's faith-based and community-based boundaries. The deception was particularly calculated in its method of delivery, using the girl's own cousin sister as the instrument through which the false Hindu identity was introduced, exploiting a trusted family connection to lend credibility to the false identity and lower the girl's natural caution. The act of assuming a false religious identity to deceive and manipulate someone into a relationship is inherently malicious. It undermines the victim's right to make informed decisions about their relationships, especially those that involve significant cultural and religious dimensions. The subsequent coercion to convert to Islam adds another layer of religious hate, as it attempts to strip the victim of her religious freedom and force her into a belief system against her will. This type of exploitation, particularly when it involves coercion, threats, and religious deception, highlights a profound disrespect for the victim's faith and autonomy. It is a deliberate and calculated attempt to exert control over her, using religion as a tool of manipulation and domination. Such actions are rooted in religious intolerance and are clear manifestations of religiously motivated hate. Further, the rape of the Hindu girl by both Imran and Dilshad in the confined room in Lucknow constituted a serious and direct act of sexual assault against a vulnerable Hindu girl whose trust had been obtained entirely through deliberate religious identity deception and sustained psychological grooming. The confinement of the Hindu girl in a locked room in an unfamiliar city far from her home and family reflected a deliberate strategy of placing her in a situation of maximum physical vulnerability and isolation, ensuring that the assault could be carried out without any possibility of intervention or escape. This itself is a severe form of intimidation. The purpose behind the violence employed was to coerce the victim to abandon her faith and accept Islam. The underlying motivation of predatory proselytisation itself is animosity towards the professed faith of the victim. In this case, there was violence involved in the pressure exerted to forcefully convert the Hindu girl. Further, the central aim of the perpetrators was to disenfranchise the Hindu girl from her professed faith. Since the central motivation is religion, this case has been added as a hate crime. The sustained conversion pressure directed at the Hindu girl in the immediate aftermath of the rape reflected a deliberate and calculated strategy of imposing the conversion demand at the precise moment of her maximum psychological devastation and vulnerability. The sequencing of the rape, followed immediately by conversion pressure, confirmed that the two acts were not separate or unrelated but components of a single and integrated predatory operation in which the physical assault was used as an instrument of psychological destruction designed to make the Hindu girl's resistance to the conversion demand impossible to sustain. The explicit nature of the conversion demand, confirmed through the Hindu girl's own statement before the court, removed any ambiguity about the religiously motivated dimension of the assault. The perpetrators did not merely rape the Hindu girl but used the rape as a deliberate and calculated instrument of religious coercion, imposing the conversion demand in the immediate aftermath of the assault when the Hindu girl was at her most physically and psychologically devastated. The direct and explicit linking of the rape to the conversion demand confirmed that the assault was not merely a crime of sexual violence but a religiously motivated predatory operation in which physical violence was consciously deployed as the ultimate instrument of forced religious conversion. The conversion demand directed at a Hindu girl in the aftermath of rape reflected a particularly calculated and dehumanising form of religious coercion, targeting not only her Hindu faith but her dignity, her bodily autonomy, and her caste identity simultaneously, confirming the deeply communal and religiously motivated nature of the entire predatory operation from its inception. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the tracker.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 1
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
