Minor Hindu girl deceived and subjected to prolonged sexually exploitation and blackmail by Muslim man faking Hindu identity

Case ID : 30a973c | Location : Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 16 February, 2026

Case ID : 30a973c

Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

16 February, 2026

Minor Hindu girl deceived and subjected to prolonged sexually exploitation and blackmail by Muslim man faking Hindu identity

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Pattern of targeting Hindu women

Case Summary

A 17-year-old Hindu girl from Ahmedabad Rural, Gujarat, was deceived, sexually exploited, and blackmailed by a Muslim man named Bittu Khan, who concealed his religious identity and posed as a Hindu. According to reports, the accused, Bittu Khan, also reported as Bittukhan Rahishkhan, created a fake profile on the Achat messaging application and introduced himself as "Sonu", a 23-year-old unmarried Hindu man. The minor Hindu victim, who was pursuing her studies while residing in a hostel in Vallabh Vidyanagar, came into contact with the profile in February 2026. Over time, he gained her trust through regular conversations before obtaining her mobile number and shifting their communication to WhatsApp, where he continued interacting with her under the false Hindu identity. As their conversations progressed over the following months, the accused began subjecting the minor to sustained sexual harassment and psychological manipulation. He repeatedly pressured her to participate in nude video calls and insisted that she meet him in person for a physical relationship. When the girl refused, he threatened to circulate her private photographs and personal information on social media, warning that he would publicly defame her. He also manipulated her emotionally by threatening to end his own life if she did not comply with his demands and told her that he would mention her name in a suicide note, leaving the minor in a state of severe mental distress. Fearing the consequences of these threats, she participated in two video calls, after which the accused used the recordings to blackmail her and continued pressuring her into a physical relationship. The accused also gained unauthorised access to the victim's digital accounts by fraudulently obtaining the passwords to her Gmail and Instagram accounts. This enabled him to monitor her online activities and exercise greater control over her communications. The girl's family further suspected that he had shared her mobile number with other individuals without her knowledge, intensifying concerns about her safety and privacy. The deception came to light after the victim learnt through one of the accused's acquaintances that the person she knew as "Sonu" was, in reality, Bittu Khan, a Muslim man from Gwalior who was already married and had a daughter. Police investigation established that he had deliberately concealed both his religious identity and marital status while presenting himself as a young unmarried Hindu man in order to gain the confidence of the minor. Following the revelation of his true identity, the intimidation and blackmail became more intense, placing the victim under continuous psychological pressure. Unable to bear the sustained harassment, the minor eventually confided in her mother after returning home. Her mother immediately approached Kanbha Police Station in Ahmedabad Rural and lodged a complaint. Acting on the complaint, a joint team comprising officers from Kanbha Police, the Local Crime Branch, and the Aslali Division initiated a technical and cyber investigation. By analysing the accused's digital footprint and electronic communications, investigators traced his location to Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. A police team subsequently travelled to Gwalior, conducted a raid, and arrested Bittu Khan. During the course of the investigation, police discovered that the accused had been communicating with four other girls through the same messaging application. Investigators began examining whether they had also been targeted using a similar pattern of deception and exploitation. Bittu Khan was booked under the relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and the Information Technology Act for offences arising from his online impersonation, sexual exploitation of a minor, criminal intimidation, unauthorised access to digital accounts, and related acts.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is: Crimes against women in relationship or other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu, with the tertiary category being - Name changed and Pattern of targeting Hindu women. 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 included in the tracker because a Muslim man deliberately concealed his religious identity and posed as a Hindu to gain the trust of a minor Hindu girl before subjecting her to online grooming, sexual coercion, blackmail, and psychological abuse. The decision to assume a false Hindu identity was not incidental but formed the very foundation of the offence. The accused deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with the minor Hindu vicitm. 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. The aggravating circumstances in this case were further strengthened by the fact that the victim was only seventeen years old. As a minor, she lacked the emotional maturity and life experience necessary to recognise sophisticated online manipulation and religiously motivated deception. The accused deliberately exploited this vulnerability by combining religious deception with psychological coercion, and sexual blackmail. The victim's age significantly diminished her ability to identify the deception at an early stage, making her particularly susceptible to prolonged manipulation. The offence therefore represented the exploitation of both her minority and the trust arising from her religious identity. This intersection of identity fraud and sexual violence establishes that the attempted sexual assault possesses a definitive religious dimension; it cannot be viewed merely as an isolated act of lust, but rather as the direct culmination of targeted profiling based on religious identity. The sexual harassment directed at the victim was specifically calculated to humiliate, violate, and target a Hindu girl precisely because of her faith, transforming the physical violation into an assault on her religious identity itself. Consequently, because the harassment and attempted assault were systematically directed at a Hindu victim through deliberate religious deception and profiling, this act of sexual violence serves as a clear, definitive example of a religiously motivated hate crime. The sequence of events demonstrated that the false Hindu identity was not an isolated act of deception but the mechanism through which the accused obtained prolonged access to the victim and created the circumstances necessary for her exploitation. The religious deception therefore remained intrinsically connected to every subsequent stage of the offence. Police investigation also revealed that the accused had been communicating with four other girls through the same messaging application, with a similar modus operandi. Thus, this incident wass not an isolated case but part of a broader pattern where Hindu women are deliberately targeted through deception and emotional blackmail for religious conversion and sexual exploitation. Such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents. Taken together, the facts demonstrate that the accused's deliberate concealment of his Muslim identity, adoption of a Hindu identity, targeting of a minor Hindu girl, and subsequent online sexual exploitation and blackmail were not independent acts but formed part of a continuous course of conduct. The offence was facilitated through religious identity fraud directed at a Hindu victim, making her religious identity integral to the manner in which the crime was executed. On this basis, the case has been included in the hate crime database under the category of a Muslim man pretending to be Hindu to target and exploit a minor Hindu girl. 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, though it is mentioned that she came into contact with the accused in February 2026. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date, 17 February 2026, as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 17 July 2026, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported. Disclaimer (Victim Count): The victim count has been recorded as 1 because only one victim is explicitly identified in the available source material. Although reports indicate that four other girls were also targeted, the sources do not provide sufficient details to confirm them as individual victims. Accordingly, only the explicitly identified victim has been included in the victim count.