Minor Hindu girl lured, sexually exploited, brainwashed to wear burqa and offer namaz by Muslim man

Case ID : 30a840d | Location : Wardha, Maharashtra, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 3 September, 2025

Case ID : 30a840d

Wardha, Maharashtra, India

3 September, 2025

Minor Hindu girl lured, sexually exploited, brainwashed to wear burqa and offer namaz by Muslim man

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Conversion of minor

Case Summary

In the Wardha district, Maharashtra, a minor Hindu girl was lured, sexually exploited and brainwashed to wear a burqa and offer namaz by a Muslim man named Rehan Farukh Ali. According to reports, the accused, Rehan Farukh Ali, targeted the minor victim and maintained sustained contact with her through Instagram and phone calls between 4 September 2025 and 27 April 2026. During this period, he developed an intimate relationship with the victim and sexually exploited her. Objectionable videos and photographs were recovered from the victim's mobile phone. The extent of the psychological manipulation the victim was subjected to became apparent through the condition in which she was found. The victim was brainwashed to such a degree that she had begun reading namaz [Islamic prayer] in Arabic and had ordered a burqa [full Islamic face and body covering] online. The victim was receiving expert counselling at the time of publication, given the severity of her psychological condition. Wardha police took immediate action and took Rehan Farukh Ali into custody on 29 April 2026. Bajrang Dal's investigation of the accused's mobile contacts revealed that he had been in contact with four additional girls beyond the primary victim, raising concerns about a broader pattern of targeting. Bajrang Dal demanded that this wider network be investigated. Santoshsingh Thakur, Vidarbha Province President of International Bajrang Dal, pressured the administration through a press conference held at Shri Ram Mandir, Wardha, to conduct a thorough investigation. Sheetal Baghel, Vidarbha Province President of International Durgashakti Parishad, disclosed details of the victim's condition at the press conference. International Bajrang Dal formed a special district-level team to address such cases and announced that training camps would be organised to prevent love jihad and forced conversion incidents.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of- Predatory Proselytisation. Within, it, the sub-category selected it - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation and subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories for this case - Rape and sexual assault/harassment and Conversion of minor. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was lured, sexually exploited and pressured for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Rehan Farukh Ali. Firstly, 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 converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Furthermore, any supposed consent given for sexual relations or religious conversion is considered invalid under the POCSO Act. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate. Secondly, Rehan Farukh Ali's operation against the Hindu minor in Wardha was not a relationship that incidentally involved religious pressure. It was a structured eight-month indoctrination campaign conducted through digital platforms, in which the cultivation of a romantic relationship served as the delivery mechanism for a sustained conversion operation. The contact maintained through Instagram and phone from 4 September 2025 to 27 April 2026 was not casual communication between two individuals in a relationship. It was an eight-month pipeline through which Islamic religious identity was introduced, normalised, and progressively embedded into the victim's daily life. Thirdly, the measurable outcome of the indoctrination is the most significant marker in this case. The victim was not merely exposed to Islamic content or encouraged to consider conversion as an abstract possibility. She had been brought to a point where she was reading namaz in Arabic, a practice that requires active learning and daily repetition, and had taken the concrete material step of ordering a burqa online. These are not the outcomes of casual romantic influence. They are the outcomes of a structured and sustained religious indoctrination programme conducted over eight months through sustained digital contact with a minor who was simultaneously being subjected to physical exploitation. The introduction of the victim to these Islamic customs and religious practices further demonstrated that the relationship extended beyond interpersonal involvement and entered the domain of religious conditioning aimed at conversion. Making the victim learn and recite namaz in Arabic and encouraging her to adopt the burqa served as mechanisms of gradual religious assimilation, familiarising her with visible and ritualistic aspects of Islamic identity. Such actions indicated a deliberate attempt to reshape the victim’s behavioural and religious orientation by normalising Islamic practices in her daily life. The progression from online contact and emotional influence to the adoption of Islamic customs reflected a sustained effort to detach the minor from her original religious identity and prepare her for eventual conversion to Islam. Fourth, the accused also sexually exploited her before brainwashing her for religious conversion. Often in such cases, sexual exploitation serves a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The intention was to break the victim down, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, so that she could be converted. This was not a random act of exploitation; it was systematic, targeted, and rooted in religious animosity. Furthermore, the revelation that the accused was simultaneously in contact with four additional girls beyond the primary victim is the most explicit pattern marker in this case. A lone individual pursuing a romantic relationship does not maintain parallel contact with four other girls through the same digital methodology. The existence of a wider contact network establishes that the accused was operating a structured targeting operation rather than pursuing a single relationship, and that the primary victim was one of multiple Hindu girls being subjected to the same conversion methodology simultaneously. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, Rehan Farukh Ali's conduct reflected more than sexual exploitation of a minor. By cultivating an eight-month digital relationship with a Hindu minor, using physical exploitation and compromising material to create psychological dependency, conducting a sustained indoctrination programme that brought the victim to active Islamic religious practice, his actions demonstrated a deliberate and organised campaign to replace the Hindu religious identity of the minor girl through a coordinated digital grooming and conversion operation. This reflects an underlying hostility toward Hindu religious identity that cannot be characterised as anything other than religiously motivated. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. Therefore, religious conversions, even of minors, are often seen as a badge of honour, totally disregarding the methods used to achieve it. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It was reported that the accused exploited the victim beginning from 4 September 2025. Therefore, the date of the incident has been recorded as 4 September 2025.