Hindu minor groomed by Muslim youth posing as Hindu on Instagram and sexually assaulted in Uttarakhand

Case ID : 30a8999 | Location : Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 22 May, 2026

Case ID : 30a8999

Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

22 May, 2026

Hindu minor groomed by Muslim youth posing as Hindu on Instagram and sexually assaulted in Uttarakhand

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

A 16-year-old Hindu minor girl from Tyuni area, Dehradun district, Uttarakhand, who was studying in Class 10 at a government inter college, was groomed and sexually assaulted by a Muslim youth named Anas from Kulhal, Vikasnagar. The accused concealed his Muslim identity by creating a fake Instagram profile under the Hindu name "Ansh Rana." The operation was facilitated by a local vegetable seller named Mohammed Junaid, who arranged a hotel room for Anas without identity verification. As per details, Anas created a fake Instagram profile under the Hindu name "Ansh Rana" to conceal his Muslim identity and establish contact with the 16-year-old Hindu minor girl. He lured her through the false Hindu identity and subsequently took her to a hotel room in Tyuni Bazaar, where he sexually assaulted her. On the evening of 23 May 2026, the girl's family members and others went searching for her. Local people found Anas in a hotel room in an objectionable situation at night. He attempted to flee the scene but was subsequently arrested by police after the family filed a complaint. Mohammed Junaid, a local vegetable seller, had facilitated the crime by arranging the hotel room for Anas without conducting identity verification, a role that drew further outrage from Hindu organisations. Police registered a case against Anas under the POCSO [Protection of Children from Sexual Offences] Act and the BNS [Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita] sections. SSP Pramendra Dobhal confirmed the case registration and stated that the investigation was underway. The Tyuni main market was completely shut down in protest by local traders and workers of the Ruda Sena Devbhoomi organisation. Outraged residents took to the streets, raised slogans, and burned effigies. Hindu leader Rakesh Tomar Uttarakhandi warned that such conduct against the daughters of Devbhoomi [the sacred land of the gods, a reverent name for Uttarakhand] would not be tolerated. Ruda Sena coordinator Rakesh Uttarakhandi stated that 126 similar cases had been intercepted in the region with girls safely returned home, and alleged that Deobandi elements were systematically targeting Hindu girls from the Jaunsari tribal community in western Uttar Pradesh through love jihad operations. Local residents demanded strict verification of outsiders and strict action against hotels providing rooms without identity verification.

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 "Man pretends to be Hindu". The tertiary category for this case is "Name changed". 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 sub-category for this case 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 hate crimes. Anas did not approach the 16-year-old Hindu minor girl as himself. He constructed a completely false Hindu identity, "Ansh Rana," on Instagram, and presented that identity to the minor as the basis of their entire relationship. The name "Ansh Rana" is unambiguously Hindu in character. Its selection was not arbitrary. It was a deliberate operational choice made in the knowledge that a Hindu minor girl would not have engaged with him had he presented his true Muslim identity. The false name was the instrument through which her trust was obtained, and her access was secured. The grooming operation conducted under the false Hindu identity reflects a structured and premeditated methodology. Anas did not encounter the minor girl by chance and acted on impulse. He created a fake social media profile, cultivated a relationship with her through that profile over a sufficient period to produce the trust required for her to accompany him, and then used that trust to lure her to a hotel room in Tyuni Bazaar, where he sexually assaulted her. The involvement of Mohammed Junaid, a local vegetable seller who arranged the hotel room without identity verification, establishes that the operation involved at least one additional participant who provided logistical support. A grooming and sexual assault operation that required advance hotel arrangements facilitated by a local accomplice reflects a level of planning and coordination that goes beyond opportunistic predation. It is further 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. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation to achieve religious conversion, it is a blatant act of religious hate, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. The pattern dimension of this case is the most significant contextual marker. Ruda Sena coordinator Rakesh Uttarakhandi stated that 126 similar cases had been intercepted in the region involving Hindu girls from the Jaunsari tribal community being targeted through love jihad operations by Muslim youths using fake Hindu identities on social media. The Chakrata case referenced in the source, in which a Muslim youth named Farman created a fake Instagram identity and trapped a Hindu woman with the intention of taking her to Deoband in Saharanpur, reflects the same operational template: a false Hindu social media identity, a Hindu woman or minor as the target, and a Muslim ideological network as the destination. The recurrence of the same methodology across multiple cases in the same geographic region, involving the same targeted community, reflects an organised and coordinated operation rather than individual criminal conduct. The targeting of Hindu minor girls from the Jaunsari tribal community is not incidental. Tribal Hindu communities in Uttarakhand represent a structurally vulnerable population whose geographic isolation, limited institutional protection, and economic precarity make them accessible to predatory operations that would be less effective against more institutionally connected communities. The selection of a 16-year-old Hindu minor studying in Class 10 at a government inter college as the target of the operation reflects a deliberate assessment of her vulnerability and a calculated decision to exploit it through a false Hindu identity on a social media platform she used for connection and communication. This case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker because the sexual assault of the Hindu minor girl was not incidental, opportunistic, or the product of a genuine relationship. It was the terminal act of a planned grooming operation in which a Hindu minor was identified as a target, lured under a false Hindu identity constructed specifically to exploit her religious trust, and sexually assaulted when the grooming had produced sufficient access and control. The victim was targeted specifically because she was Hindu and a minor from a vulnerable tribal community, and the false Hindu name was adopted because it was the most effective instrument available for gaining the trust of a Hindu minor girl in a Hindu majority community. 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.