Hindu woman lured by Muslim man posing as Hindu on Instagram, forcibly converted to Islam and married through nikah

Case ID : 30a7992 | Location : Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 3 April, 2026

Case ID : 30a7992

Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

3 April, 2026

Hindu woman lured by Muslim man posing as Hindu on Instagram, forcibly converted to Islam and married through nikah

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Family claims grooming

Forced conversion after marriage

Forced to do Nikah

Forced to wear Hijab

Case Summary

A Hindu woman named Komal from Gurdaspur, Punjab was lured into a fraudulent relationship on Instagram by a Muslim man from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh who concealed his identity behind a false Hindu name. He persuaded her to come to his home, forcibly converted her to Islam, and married her through nikah [Islamic marriage ceremony]. The case came to light when local BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] workers raised an alarm, leading to police intervention. The accused was subsequently jailed and a conversion case was registered against him. Raoof, a resident of Islamabad locality in the Lisadi Gate area of Meerut, created a false Hindu identity on Instagram and used it to contact Komal, a Hindu woman from Gurdaspur, Punjab. He cultivated a relationship with her through the platform while concealing his Muslim identity throughout. On 20 March, Raoof persuaded Komal to come to Meerut and brought her to his home. Once she was there and isolated from her family, he forcibly converted her to Islam and married her through nikah. The conversion and marriage took place without her family's knowledge or consent. On the night of 30 March, BJP councillor Abhinav Arora and BJP worker Bhavesh Mehta, along with 15 to 20 other BJP workers, received information about the forced conversion and nikah and gathered at Raoof's home in protest. Police arrived at the scene and took both Raoof and Komal to the police station. Komal's father filed a written complaint with police, on the basis of which a conversion case was registered against Raoof and he was sent to jail. On Saturday, police brought Komal to the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate [ACJM] to record her statement. She arrived at court wearing a burqa. Inspector Ashok Kumar stated that her statement could not be recorded as her date of birth record was not available. Police returned her to Asha Jyoti Kendra [a government-run shelter for women in distress] pending verification of her date of birth, after which her statement would be recorded.

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 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. Another sub-category for this case is "Brainwashed and/or groomed". The tertiary category here is "Family claims grooming". 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. One other sub-category that this case qualifies for is "Forced conversion after marriage". The tertiary categories here are "Forced to do Nikah" and "Forced to wear Hijab". In such cases, a non-Hindu man marries a Hindu woman, and the force/pressure to convert to any Abrahamic faith, like Islam, begins after marriage. In such cases, typically, two patterns emerge. First, when the relationship is consensual, and the religious identity of the perpetrator is known to the Hindu woman in the relationship. The marriage could be under the Special Marriages Act, where neither parties are required to convert their religion for the marriage to be considered legitimate. While the victim in such cases enters matrimony assuming that religious identity is not a barrier, the non-Hindu man starts to pressure the woman to convert her religion after marriage. The second is when the woman gets into a marriage with the man, pretending to share her faith. Later, when the truth is revealed, the man starts pressuring the woman to convert her religion and give up her religious identity. In both situations, there is application of force by the perpetrator, including the denial of the woman’s religious rights. Some of the means by which the woman is forced/pressured to convert include force-feeding beef, being forced to read the Kalma, being forced to wear a hijab, forced to undergo Halala, etc. There are several instances where, after marriage, the woman voluntarily converts to Islam. Such cases are often argued to be a result of religious brainwashing, however, for the purpose of documenting religiously motivated hate crimes, in the absence of the victim complaining of forced conversion, such cases do not form a part of the database. This case qualifies as a religiously motivated hate crime in which a Hindu woman named Komal from Gurdaspur, Punjab was deceived through a fabricated Hindu identity on Instagram, lured to Meerut, forcibly converted to Islam, and married through nikah without her family's knowledge or consent. The perpetrator, Raoof, constructed every element of his approach around the deliberate concealment of his Muslim identity and the deliberate targeting of a Hindu woman. The construction of a false Hindu identity is the foundational religious marker of this case. Raoof did not approach Komal as himself. He created a false Hindu persona on Instagram and used it to establish a relationship with her over a period of time. This act of identity concealment was not incidental to the case. It was its starting point. He understood that his Muslim identity would have been a barrier to the relationship he sought to establish with a Hindu woman, and he removed that barrier through sustained religious deception. The entire relationship was built on a lie constructed specifically around the victim's Hindu identity. The grooming of the victim through a fabricated online identity is the second religious marker. Raoof used Instagram to cultivate Komal's trust over a period of time, presenting himself as a Hindu man and providing false information about himself throughout. This was not a spontaneous encounter. It was a calculated process of manufactured emotional dependency designed to make Komal willing to travel from Gurdaspur to Meerut on the basis of a relationship that did not exist in the form she believed it did. Her father's complaint confirms that she was deceived and manipulated into making that journey. The forced conversion to Islam is the third and most explicit religious marker in this case. Once Komal was in Meerut, isolated from her family and entirely within Raoof's control, he converted her to Islam by force. The conversion was not a mutual decision reached within a genuine relationship. It was an act of religious coercion carried out against a Hindu woman who had been brought to a strange city under false pretences and had no immediate means of escape or recourse. The forced recitation of the Kalma [Islamic declaration of faith] and the change of religious identity were imposed on her without her family's knowledge. The forced nikah is the fourth religious marker. Immediately following the conversion, Raoof conducted a nikah with Komal. This marriage was not a freely entered union. It was the culmination of a process of deception, isolation, and religious coercion. By the time the nikah took place, Komal had already been removed from her home, stripped of her Hindu identity, and converted to a new faith against her will. The nikah formalised her entrapment within a religious and legal framework she had never consented to enter. The forced adoption of Islamic dress is the fifth religious marker. When Komal appeared before the court, she was wearing a burqa. This is significant. A Hindu woman from Gurdaspur who had been in Meerut for a matter of days had been made to adopt full Islamic dress. The burqa was not a personal choice made in the context of a genuine conversion. It was the visible symbol of a forced religious transformation, imposed on a Hindu woman as part of a systematic effort to erase her Hindu identity and replace it with an Islamic one. The family's recognition of the grooming and their decision to file a conversion case reflects the broader religious dimension of the harm. Komal's father did not merely report a missing person. He filed a complaint specifically framing the case as one of forced conversion, which led to the registration of a conversion case against Raoof and his subsequent imprisonment. The institutional response, including the registration of a conversion case and Raoof's remand to jail, confirms that the religious character of the crime was recognised by both the family and the authorities. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the tracker. Disclaimer: The HinduPhobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. This case involves a sequence of confirmed dates within the source, including 20 March and 30 March 2026. However, as the exact date of the primary incident cannot be independently verified beyond the source, the publication date of 4 April 2026 has been used as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes. This was recorded for documentation purposes only.