Hindu woman lured and deceived into marriage by Bangladeshi Muslim man faking Hindu identity

Case ID : 30a8780 | Location : Bengaluru, Karnataka, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 16 May, 2026

Case ID : 30a8780

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

16 May, 2026

Hindu woman lured and deceived into marriage by Bangladeshi Muslim man faking Hindu identity

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Case Summary

A Hindu woman was lured and deceived into marriage by a Muslim man named Mohammed Zakir, who pretended to Hindu. According to reports, the accused, Mohammed Zakir, originally from Barishal in Bangladesh, had entered India illegally through West Bengal around five to six years earlier. After crossing the border, he stayed in Kolkata for nearly a year, where he worked various jobs while procuring forged Indian identity documents, including a fake Aadhaar card and PAN card, through a document forgery network operating in West Bengal. Using these forged documents, he assumed a false Hindu identity and subsequently moved to Bengaluru, where he secured employment at a private company. During his stay in Bengaluru, he came into contact with a Hindu woman from Darrang district in Assam. Concealing both his Muslim identity, religious identity, and Bangladeshi nationality, he introduced himself as a Hindu man from Kolkata. Trusting his fabricated identity, the woman entered into a relationship with him, after which the two got married and had a daughter together. The deception continued for several years until March 2026, when the victim discovered his real identity and nationality amidst nationwide operations against Bangladeshi infiltrators. She learned that her husband was neither Hindu nor Indian, but an illegal Bangladeshi national living in India under forged documents and a fabricated Hindu identity. Following the revelation, the victim left Bengaluru along with her three-year-old daughter and returned to her native village in Darrang district, Assam. On 17 May 2026, Mohammed Zakir travelled to Assam in search of his wife and daughter and arrived in Dhola village in Darrang district. His presence aroused suspicion among local residents, who questioned him after noticing inconsistencies in his responses. Alert villagers informed the police, following which he was arrested by Assam Police on 18 May 2026. During questioning, Zakir admitted before the media that he was a Bangladeshi national who had entered India illegally through West Bengal. The police subsequently initiated an investigation into the forged document network that had enabled him to obtain fake Indian identity papers and move freely across the country while concealing his nationality and religious identity.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being 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. 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu woman was lured and deceived into marriage by a Muslim man named Mohammed Zakir, who pretended to be Hindu. The accused deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with a Hindu woman. 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. In such instances, identity concealment is not merely a personal deception but a calculated strategy rooted in religious targeting and profiling. The accused was aware that the victim, being Hindu, may not have consented to the relationship had she known his real identity from the outset. He therefore circumvented her ability to exercise informed choice by deliberately lying about his name and religious background. This demonstrated a premeditated effort to exploit the victim specifically on the basis of her religious identity. This case is not an isolated incident of religiously motivated targeting of Hindu women by Muslim men posing as Hindus. The Hinduphobia Tracker documented over 1,140 cases between January 2023 and 18 May 2026 in which Hindu women were targeted in interfaith relationships by non-Hindu men, particularly Muslims. In these cases, the perpetrators subjected the victims to forced religious conversion, sexual exploitation, physical abuse, threats, blackmail, or sustained religious harassment after entering into a relationship or marriage with them. Significantly, in over 720 of these documented cases, the accused had concealed their religious identity and posed as Hindus in order to gain the trust of Hindu women and initiate relationships with them under false pretences. This recurring pattern of deception demonstrated a systematic form of religious targeting in which Hindu women were specifically profiled and exploited by concealing religious identity to bypass informed consent and familial or religious objections. Some examples of such cases include an incident in Bahadarabad, Haridwar district, Uttarakhand, where a Hindu woman was blackmailed and raped by a Muslim man named Iqbal, who had posed as a Hindu in order to entrap her. In another case from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived and sexually exploited by a Muslim man named Sufian, who had impersonated a Hindu man on social media to lure her into a relationship. Similarly, in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman, who was the mother of a six-year-old child, was deceived, forcibly converted to Islam, and kept in captivity by a Muslim man named Ehsan Hussain. The accused had posed as a Hindu and trapped her in a fabricated romantic relationship before coercing her to abandon her faith, renaming her Khushboo Khatun, forcibly marrying her, and later relocating her to Chennai. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. The earliest date explicitly mentioned in connection with the incident is 17 May 2026, when the accused travelled to Assam in search of the victim. Since Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began and not when it was reported, we have considered the date of the incident as 17 May 2026, though the media reported the incident on 19 May 2026.