Minor Hindu girl befriended, groomed, pressured to convert to Islam and undergo nikah by Muslim men in Nagpur
Nagpur, Maharashtra, India 
26 August, 2026
Case Summary
In Nagpur, Maharashtra, an 11-year-old Hindu girl was befriended and groomed by Muslim men, who engaged her in obscene conversations and pressured her to convert to Islam and undergo nikah (Islamic marriage). They also recorded her video calls, which were subsequently uploaded and circulated on social media. The accused also created a fake social media account in the girl's name without her consent and used it to upload religious and obscene content. The Hinduphobia Tracker team contacted the police regarding the case, who confirmed that the victim was Hindu and the perpetrators were Muslim. The victim was a Class VI student who had created an Instagram account after learning about the platform from a friend. The accused subsequently contacted her through different Instagram accounts, befriended her, and began engaging her in obscene conversations. During these conversations, they also discussed religious matters and pressured the girl to change her religion and undergo nikah. The matter came to light when the girl's 42-year-old mother, a resident of Jaripatka, checked her daughter's social media activity. She discovered obscene chats and recordings of video calls involving her daughter. According to the complaint, the recordings had been uploaded and circulated on Instagram. The mother also found that the girl had been contacted through another Instagram account, through which the accused used obscene language and sent her vulgar messages and reels. Police subsequently found that a fake Instagram account had been created in the girl's name without her consent. Religious and obscene content had been uploaded through the account. After discovering the activity, the girl's mother approached Jaripatka Police Station and lodged a complaint. Police registered a case against the Muslim perpetrators, Ankit Madari, Masum Ali Madari and Ankit Sampat Devgade, who was identified as the holder of the Instagram account “Soul of Music - Ankit”. Following the registration of the case, police arrested one of the accused. One report described the arrested individual as a 24-year-old man from Chandrapur, while another identified him as a 28-year-old man. Police registered the case under Section 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, along with other relevant provisions of the law. The arrested accused was taken into custody, and police began examining the Instagram accounts, chats, video-call recordings, uploaded material, messages, reels and other digital evidence. Investigators were also verifying the precise sequence of messages through the digital trail to establish the circumstances of the case. Police sources stated that the matter involved the online grooming of a Hindu minor for religious conversion and marriage and was being handled under the framework of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. At the time of writing this report, further investigation was underway.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category selected in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the selected subcategory is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category selected is: Conversion of minor, 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 at 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 the 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 proselytisation, 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 selected in the case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The sub-category selected is: Brainwashed and/or Groomed. The tertiary category selected is: Conversion of minor, 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 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 other subcategory selected is: Forced conversion before marriage. The subcategory selected is: 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, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her 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 the 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 pressurizing 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. This case was included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because the minor Hindu girl was subjected to sustained efforts to exploit her vulnerability and pressure her to sever her connection with her Hindu faith by converting to Islam and undergoing nikah. The religious motive was evident from the repeated discussions concerning religion and the pressure placed on her to change her faith and marry the Muslim perpetrators. The attempt to alter the victim's religious identity formed a significant component of the conduct, distinguishing the incident from a conventional case of online sexual harassment. The fact that the victim was a minor made her particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are especially vulnerable to such exploitation. They are not equipped to make informed, life-altering decisions concerning religious conversion, relationships or marriage with an adult. Genuine and informed consent and change of conscience were therefore absent from the outset. In this case, the perpetrators exploited the victim's age and vulnerability to influence her religious identity and pressure her to convert to Islam and undergo nikah. The exploitation of a minor's vulnerability for the purpose of altering her religious identity gave the offence a clear religious dimension and made it a case of a religiously driven hate crime. The manner in which the victim was contacted and a connection was established through social media also demonstrated a pattern of predatory targeting. The Hindu minor was groomed and subjected to obscene conversations and sexual harassment. This initial contact was followed by discussions concerning religion and pressure to convert to Islam and undergo nikah. The sequence of events showed that grooming and sexual exploitation were used to establish influence and control over the victim. This control was then used to place pressure on her concerning her religious identity. The targeting of the victim and the subsequent efforts to alter her faith demonstrated that the offence was not limited to sexual exploitation. It also involved religiously motivated targeting, making it a clear case of a religiously driven hate crime. The pressure exerted on the victim to convert to Islam formed a central part of the religiously motivated nature of the offence because it directly violated her religious autonomy and her right to retain her Hindu faith. A change of religion that arises from an individual's free will and genuine conviction is fundamentally different from one brought about through external persuasion, grooming, sustained pressure or coercion. In this case, the victim's Hindu identity was specifically targeted, and efforts were made to force her to abandon it and adopt Islam. The objective was therefore not simply to influence a personal choice but to alter an existing religious identity through external pressure. Such conduct demonstrated a refusal to respect the victim's right to remain Hindu and treated her faith as something that had to be discarded and replaced. The use of grooming, pressure and coercive tactics to achieve this end reflected deep-seated hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. It demonstrated a mindset in which her Hindu faith was not accepted as an identity she was entitled to retain, but was instead treated as an identity that needed to be erased and substituted. This targeting of her religious autonomy and the attempt to forcibly alter her Hindu identity demonstrated religious animosity towards Hinduism and formed a clear basis for categorising the incident as a religiously driven hate crime. The pressure exerted on the victim to undergo nikah further demonstrated the objective of institutionalising this change in her religious identity. Under Islamic jurisprudence, a Hindu girl seeking to marry a Muslim man through nikah must first convert to Islam. The demand that the victim convert was therefore intrinsically linked to the demand that she undergo nikah. Her conversion would enable the marriage, while the marriage would formalise and reinforce the religious change imposed upon her. In this context, nikah was not merely presented as a marriage but as part of a process through which the victim's coerced conversion could be solidified. The combined pressure to abandon her Hindu faith, convert to Islam and undergo nikah demonstrated an attempt to exercise control over her religious identity and personal choices. The proposed marriage thus functioned as a means of reinforcing the coerced change in her religious identity, making the incident a clear case of a religiously driven hate crime. The circulation of the victim's obscene video-call recordings on social media and the creation of a fake Instagram account in her name further demonstrated the extent of the exploitation and targeting she faced. The fake account was used to upload religious and obscene content without her consent. These acts exposed the minor to further humiliation and exploitation while also using her identity as a vehicle for religious content. Taken together, these actions demonstrated a pattern of predatory targeting and manipulation directed at a vulnerable Hindu child. The sexual exploitation, online abuse and pressure concerning her faith were interconnected. This further established the religiously motivated nature of the offence and made it a clear case of a religiously driven hate crime. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the victim’s ordeal began, rather than the date on which the case is reported in the media. However, in the present case, the media reports did not specify the exact date on which the victim was first approached or drawn into the online interaction by the perpetrators. The available records did not establish an earlier date marking the beginning of the victim’s ordeal. The case was first reported in the media on 27 August 2026. Therefore, 27 August 2026 was selected as the indicative incident date solely for documentation purposes.
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
Case sub-judice
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
