Minor Hindu girl sexually assaulted, blackmailed, forcibly converted to Islam and forced into marriage by Muslim man in Kalyan, Maharashtra
Kalyan, Maharashtra, India 
4 June, 2020
Case Summary
In Kalyan, Maharashtra, a minor Hindu girl, belonging to the Dalit community, was sexually assaulted, blackmailed, forcibly converted to Islam and forced into a marriage by a Muslim man named Abrar Ahmed Sheikh. The victim filed a complaint stating that she came into contact with the accused in June 2020, when she was fifteen years old and began visiting his clinic for work. In 2021, Abrar took her to a lodge in Kalyan West, where he identified her as his wife during check-in. In the lodge, he sexually assaulted her without her consent. When she resisted his further advances, he threatened to circulate explicit videos of her and blackmailed her. He also subjected her to harassment at the workplace. After she turned 18 in 2024, the accused began pressuring her to marry him. On 16 August 2025, he took her to a court in Bandra, Mumbai, where he obtained her signatures on stamp papers without allowing her to read their contents, and then informed her that she had been converted to Islam and given the name Naila. On 21 August 2025, he took her to an office in Bandra and forced her to undergo a nikah in the presence of a Maulvi. Following the forced marriage, Abrar threatened the Hindu victim with serious consequences if she disclosed the matter to her family. After her family learnt about the marriage and barred him from entering their home, he verbally abused them and issued death threats over phone calls. The victim subsequently filed a complaint at the Kolsewadi police station. Acting on the complaint, the police registered a First Information Report under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. Following the case's registration, the accused fled to Dubai. The Kolsewadi police initiated a further investigation into the incident.
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- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being - Conversion of minor, Victim says was brainwashed/groomed and Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion. Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The second primary category for this case is Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected is Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being Conversion of minor, Victim says was brainwashed/groomed and 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 a hate crime. The second sub-category selected: Forced conversion before marriage. Within this is the tertiary category: forced to do Nikah. 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, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert to his 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 pressuring 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. The other subcategory is: Blackmailed to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is blackmailed to convert her religion, owing to her religious identity of being a Hindu. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim, however, there could be cases where the relationship is not consensual and the non-Hindu man starts blackmailing a Hindu woman to convert her religion. In these cases, it is often seen that the Hindu woman is blackmailed with intimate photos and/or videos, threats of harm to her or her family, threats of violence etc. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. This incident constituted a religiously motivated hate crime because the Muslim perpetrator deliberately targeted a vulnerable Hindu girl to systematically erase her religious identity. The intersection of the victim's Hindu faith and her age rendered her particularly susceptible to exploitation. When victims are minors, the crime becomes far more severe as it indicates a lack of consent and genuine change of conscience. 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 to achieve his goal. The perpetrator’s actions were driven by a doctrinal hostility that viewed the subjugation and conversion of a Hindu not merely as a personal conquest, but as an ideological victory. This animosity formed the foundational motive for the sustained predatory behaviour executed over several years. The exploitation of a fiduciary relationship was central to this predatory proselytisation. By targeting a minor under the guise of providing professional training at his clinic, the perpetrator weaponised the inherent power imbalance of a workplace dynamic. Because the grooming, manipulation, and initial physical violations commenced when the victim was only fifteen years old, any element of consent was legally and morally void ab initio. This highlighted a deliberate strategy to indoctrinate and break down a Hindu youth before she possessed the maturity or agency to defend her religious autonomy. Furthermore, the perpetrator utilised sexual violence and subsequent blackmail as calculated instruments of religious subjugation. Rather than acting out of mere opportunistic criminality, he leveraged extortion, specifically the threat of circulating explicit recordings, to extract compliance. This psychological and physical terror was deployed specifically to enforce an involuntary religious conversion. The deliberate use of coercive tactics to secure submission underscored a deep-seated hostility towards her inherent faith, transforming sexual predation into a strategic tool for religious domination. The methods used to execute the conversion further demonstrated a systemic intent to obliterate the victim's professed religion. The forced execution of legal documents, specifically obtaining signatures on stamp papers without allowing the victim to read them, represented a bureaucratic enforcement of religious change. The unilateral imposition of an Islamic name served to forcefully sever the victim's ties to her Hindu heritage. This calculated erasure of her original identity was a definitive act of religious prejudice, designed to leave no trace of her previous faith. The culmination of this grooming and coercion into a forced marriage directly aligned with the documentation of forced Nikah as a hate crime. The marriage ceremony, conducted in the presence of a Maulvi without the victim's consent, functioned as a religious seal of ownership rather than a legitimate union. It was utilised as the ultimate mechanism to institutionalise the forced conversion, ensuring that the victim was permanently trapped within the perpetrator's religious framework. The marriage was entirely predatory, serving only to validate the erasure of her Hindu identity under Islamic law. Finally, this ideological aggression extended beyond the victim to encompass her entire Hindu family, fitting the criteria for harassment and threats for conversion. When the family discovered the forced assimilation and barred the perpetrator from their home, he retaliated with severe verbal abuse and death threats. This conduct revealed an overarching supremacist mindset aimed at violently enforcing religious submission upon the broader household. The threats were deployed to silence any Hindu opposition to the forced conversion, thereby cementing the religiously motivated nature of the entire criminal enterprise.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 1
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
