Hindu girl groomed on Instagram by Muslim Man using fake identity, coerced into conversion

Case ID : 30a8428 | Location : Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 7 November, 2025

Case ID : 30a8428

Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India

7 November, 2025

Hindu girl groomed on Instagram by Muslim Man using fake identity, coerced into conversion

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Family claims grooming

Forced conversion before marriage

Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices

Case Summary

A Hindu girl from Mohalla Nai Mandi, Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, was targeted through Instagram by Sameer Khan, son of Dilshad, a Muslim male from Abrar Nagar, Tarapuri, Brahmpuri, Meerut, who concealed his religious identity and befriended her approximately six months before the abduction. Over this period, Khan gave her a false promise of marriage, introduced her to aspects of Islam, and promised to teach her Islamic religious scriptures. The sustained indoctrination brainwashed the victim to the point where she became irritable and withdrawn with her own family members. Khan came to Muzaffarnagar, lured the victim and abducted her. He took her to his house in Meerut, where he held her hostage for three days, during which he told her things related to Islam and continued his attempts to convert her religion. The victim gave statements to police confirming that rape had been committed against her during this period. Her medical examination was conducted. The victim's brother filed a written complaint at Nai Mandi police station on 7 May 2026, alleging that Sameer Khan had concealed his identity, lured his sister away under the false pretext of marriage, and intended to forcibly convert her religion and conduct a nikah [Islamic marriage ceremony]. A case was registered under relevant sections of BNS [Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita] and Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act section 3/5(3). On the directions of SSP Sanjay Kumar Verma, a police team was constituted, and the accused was located through mobile surveillance and Instagram contact tracing. Police recovered the victim safely from Meerut and arrested Sameer Khan from Mal Road, Nai Mandi, within 24 hours of the complaint. The victim was placed under strict security at the Rakhi One Stop Centre. Sameer Khan was produced before the court and sent to jail. CO Nai Mandi Raju Kumar Sav confirmed that preliminary investigation established the accused was inducing the victim toward conversion. The victim's detailed statement was still awaited at the time of publication.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category for this case is "Brainwashed and/or groomed". The tertiary categories for this case are "Rape and sexual assault/harassment" and "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. Another sub-category for this case is "Forced conversion before marriage". The tertiary category here is "Forced to follow non-Hindu religious practices". In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. 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, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. 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, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurising the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. Sameer Khan's operation against the Hindu girl in Muzaffarnagar followed a methodology that has been documented repeatedly across such grooming cases worldwide: identity concealment on a digital platform, sustained grooming through false marriage promises and religious inducement, followed by physical abduction and hostage-taking once the victim had been sufficiently isolated from her family through psychological manipulation. The concealment of Khan's Muslim identity at the point of initial contact on Instagram was the foundational deception upon which the entire operation rested. The victim's trust, her emotional investment in the relationship, and her eventual susceptibility to Islamic religious content were all built on a false premise about who Khan was. Had she known his religious identity from the outset, the subsequent six months of grooming, religious inducement, and conversion pressure would not have had the access they required to produce their outcome. The deliberate presentation of a false religious identity to a Hindu woman for the purpose of gaining her trust before introducing conversion pressure is a documented and directional characteristic of predatory proselytisation targeting Hindu women through digital platforms. The six-month grooming operation was not a passive romantic relationship. It was a structured religious indoctrination programme conducted through sustained digital contact. Khan introduced the victim to aspects of Islam, promised to teach her Islamic scriptures, and cultivated a deepening familiarity with Islamic religious content that progressively displaced her Hindu religious identity. The induction of the victim into Islamic religious practice through promises of scripture teaching reflects a deliberate strategy of using religious curiosity and romantic trust as a gateway to conversion, in which the victim's engagement with Islamic content was framed as an expression of the relationship rather than as a conversion operation. The measurable outcome of this indoctrination, the victim becoming withdrawn and irritable with her own family, is a documented characteristic of successful grooming: the deliberate erosion of the victim's existing social bonds to make her more dependent on and receptive to the groomer. The physical abduction and three-day hostage-taking in Meerut represented the operational conclusion of the six-month grooming phase. Once Khan assessed that the victim had been sufficiently isolated from her family through psychological manipulation, he moved to complete the conversion through physical confinement and direct religious instruction. During the three days of hostage-taking, Khan continued to tell the victim things related to Islam, establishing that the religious indoctrination programme did not cease upon abduction but intensified under conditions of physical captivity. The forced continuation of Islamic religious instruction during a period of illegal confinement establishes that the conversion attempt was being pursued through every available instrument simultaneously: physical captivity, sustained religious instruction, and sexual violence. The rape committed during the three-day hostage-taking created a condition of shame, dependency, and psychological subjugation that made the victim more vulnerable to the conversion demands being made simultaneously. The connection between the rape and the conversion attempt is not inferential. The victim was held specifically for the purpose of conversion, and the rape occurred within that context of confinement and religious coercion. The family's identification of the grooming as a deliberate operation rather than a genuine relationship is a further religious marker. The victim's brother's complaint, which specifically identified the false identity and the conversion and nikah objective, demonstrates that the Hindu family recognised the religious character of the targeting rather than treating it as a domestic or personal matter. The family's account of the victim's changed behaviour toward them during the grooming period confirms that the indoctrination had produced observable effects on the victim's relationship with her Hindu family before the physical abduction took place. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, Sameer Khan's conduct reflected more than abduction and sexual assault. By concealing his Muslim identity to gain access to a Hindu woman on Instagram, conducting a six-month grooming and indoctrination campaign that progressively inducted her into Islamic religious practice and isolated her from her Hindu family, abducting her to Meerut, holding her hostage for three days under continued Islamic religious instruction, raping her, and attempting to complete her conversion and nikah, his actions demonstrated a deliberate and structured campaign to destroy a Hindu woman's religious identity and family bonds through the sequential deployment of digital manipulation, religious inducement, physical violence, and conversion coercion. The victim was targeted specifically because she was Hindu, and every instrument of the operation, being identity concealment, false marriage promises, Islamic indoctrination, abduction, rape, and conversion demands, was chosen because it would be most effective in separating a Hindu woman from her faith under conditions of psychological dependency and physical captivity. This reflects an underlying hostility toward Hindu religious identity that cannot be characterised as anything other than religiously motivated. 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 involved a sustained course of conduct beginning approximately six months prior to publication. 8 November 2025 has been used as the primary incident date, reflecting the approximate commencement of Sameer Khan's grooming of the victim on Instagram, derived by backtracking six months from the source's publication date of 8 May 2026. This was recorded for documentation purposes only.