Minor Hindu girl deceived into relationship, blackmailed, and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man posing as Hindu in Ghaziabad
Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India 
21 August, 2026
Case Summary
In Masuri, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, a minor Hindu girl was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man who pretended to be a Hindu. The victim was also pressured to convert to Islam and was blackmailed by the perpetrator. According to media reports, the victim was 16 years old, and the perpetrator was identified as Alam. He used the false Hindu name “Rohan Rajput” on Instagram to befriend the girl, who was studying at a school. After establishing contact with her through Instagram, Alam lured the girl into meeting him in person. During their interaction, she discovered that the person she knew as “Rohan Rajput” was actually Alam. After learning his real identity, she began distancing herself from him. Following this, Alam threatened to make their private chats viral and repeatedly pressured the girl to convert to Islam. He also pressured her to accompany him to a hotel. The girl’s father subsequently approached the Masuri police station and lodged a complaint against Alam. Police said that Alam lived in the victim’s neighbourhood and registered a case against him. The minor Hindu girl’s statement was recorded before the court, and police initiated a further investigation. At the time of writing this report, the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Masuri, said that the accused would be arrested soon.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category selected in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation, or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category selected is: Conversion of Minor. 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 subcategory selected 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 other primary category: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first subcategory selected for this case is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category selected 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 mala fide 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. The other subcategory: Brainwashed and/or Groomed. The tertiary category selected is: Conversion of Minor. 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 next subcategory selected for this case 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. In this case, a minor Hindu girl was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man who pretended to be Hindu. She was pressured to convert to Islam and was subjected to severe blackmail by the perpetrator. In this case, considering that the victim was a minor, the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are vulnerable to manipulation and coercion and may not understand the long-term ramifications of being in a relationship with an adult or converting to another faith. The perpetrator exploited the victim’s age-related vulnerability to coerce her towards conversion to Islam. This overall made it a clear case of a religiously driven hate crime and made the relationship itself predatory in nature. The fact that the perpetrator was pretending to be Hindu made the religious motive of the crime even clearer. The perpetrator's act of deception by posing as a Hindu itself demonstrates a clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim’s religion. By hiding his true identity, the Muslim man manipulated the Hindu victim's trust and targeted her under false pretences, indicating a premeditated effort to exploit the woman based on her religious background. This constituted a direct violation of her right to informed consent regarding whom she chooses to be in a relationship with, as well as an infringement upon her religious beliefs and boundaries. Thus, the perpetrator’s deliberate decision to hide his religious identity strongly underscores the religious motive behind this crime. In such instances, identity concealment is not just a deceptive tactic for personal reasons but a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling and targeting. The accused was aware that the victim, being Hindu, would likely refuse his advances if she knew his real identity, and he circumvented this by lying, which directly points to a religiously driven intent. This deception reflects a larger pattern where Hindu women and minor Hindu girls are specifically singled out using false identities by Muslim men, often with coercion or conversion in mind. Such targeted victimisation based on religion not only demonstrates a fundamental disregard for Hinduism but also exposes a deeper animosity toward Hindus and their beliefs. The victim was also pressured to convert to Islam by the perpetrator after she discovered his real identity. Pressuring a Hindu minor to abandon her faith and convert to Islam through coercion amounted to religious hostility and a violation of her religious autonomy. A change of religion is a deeply personal decision that must be made voluntarily and with informed consent, after an individual has attained the maturity necessary to understand the implications and long-term ramifications of such a decision. In this case, however, the victim was a minor and was pressured by the perpetrator to convert to Islam against her will. Such coercion undermined her ability to exercise her religious freedom freely and violated her fundamental right to practise and maintain her faith without intimidation or undue influence. The perpetrator’s attempt to compel the Hindu girl to adopt Islam, rather than respecting her existing Hindu identity and beliefs, demonstrated a disregard for her religious autonomy and identity. His conduct further reflected religious intolerance and hostility towards Hinduism, making the attempt to coerce the victim towards Islam a clear religious dimension of the crime and contributing to its characterisation as a religiously driven hate crime. The victim was also subjected to blackmail by the perpetrator, who threatened to make their private chats viral after she began distancing herself from him upon discovering his true identity. The use of blackmail demonstrated that the perpetrator was prepared to employ coercive and intimidating tactics to retain control over the minor and pressure her towards conversion to Islam. Using blackmail and threats involving the disclosure of private communications to compel a Hindu girl to submit to religious demands represented a further violation of her autonomy and dignity. Such tactics demonstrated that the perpetrator was willing to cross significant boundaries of coercion in pursuit of his objective, rather than allowing the victim to exercise her own religious choice freely. The use of blackmail in connection with pressure to convert therefore further demonstrated religious hostility and reinforced the religiously driven nature of the victimisation. Given that this case meets the parameters of a religiously driven hate crime, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when the victim’s ordeal begins rather than when the incident is published by the media. However, in this case, the exact date on which the perpetrator first approached and lured the minor Hindu girl was not specified in the available information. Therefore, 22 August 2026, being the date on which the incident was published by the media, has been selected as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes only.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
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 
