Case Summary

In Rudrapur, Uttarakhand, a minor Hindu girl was deceived into relationship and sexually exploited by a Muslim man posing as a Hindu. The accused was identified as 24-year-old Mohammad Shakib, also known as Shakib Ali, a resident of Gadarpur. The school-going Hindu girl was a resident of the Rudrapur Transit Camp/Kotwali area. Shakib had been in a relationship with her for about one year, since 2025. Members of the Bajrang Dal and other Hindu-oriented organisations gave the duration as approximately two years, describing the relationship as prolonged exploitation under the promise of marriage. After the girl discovered his true identity, Shakib threatened her and told her to remain silent. The incident came to light after Shakib took the girl to Hotel Crown Town in the Awas Vikas area of Rudrapur on the evening of 10 September 2026. He used his sister’s identity document to obtain a room at the hotel. Information that the two were at the hotel reached Bajrang Dal workers, who went there late that night, whereupon a confrontation took place. The workers thrashed Shakib and subsequently took both him and the girl to the Awas Vikas police outpost, where they handed them over to the police. Police took Shakib into custody and questioned him about his relationship with the girl. During questioning, he stated that the two had known each other for around one year. Police then informed the girl’s family, and her relatives reached the Awas Vikas police outpost. The family submitted a written complaint against Shakib, following which the police registered a rape case and began an investigation. Shakib was arrested by the police team and presented before the court. The case remained under police investigation following the registration of the First Information Report. Members of the Bajrang Dal and community representatives subsequently examined Shakib’s identity documents and mobile phone. They stated that more than 10 Aadhaar cards bearing different names had been found in his possession. A Bajrang Dal member also stated that Shakib’s mobile phone contained videos and other digital material involving several Hindu girls, indicating a pattern of targeting Hindu women. They further stated that he had secretly recorded sexual relations with women, including the minor Hindu girl involved in the case. The phone was described as containing recordings involving several women in addition to material connected with the present case.

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Why it is Hate Crime ?

In this case, the primary category selected in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary categories selected are: 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 was a clear example of a religiously driven hate crime, in which a minor Hindu girl was deceived and targeted for sexual exploitation by a Muslim man who concealed his religious identity and pretended to be a Hindu. The presence of more than 10 Aadhaar cards bearing different names and pictures, and videos of multiple Hindu women on his phone, indicated a broader pattern of targeting Hindu women through deception and exploitation. Firstly, the Muslim man’s act of deception by posing as a Hindu demonstrated a clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim’s religion. By hiding his true identity, he manipulated the minor Hindu girl’s trust and targeted her under false pretences, indicating a deliberate effort to exploit her based on her religious background. By presenting himself as a Hindu, he created a false sense of familiarity, trust and cultural compatibility with the victim. His deception did not merely concern his personal background; it specifically involved replacing his actual Muslim identity with a Hindu identity to gain access to the Hindu victim. The accused’s deliberate decision to hide his religious identity therefore underscored the religious motive behind the crime. In such instances, identity concealment is not merely 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 have refused or resisted the relationship had she known his real identity, and he circumvented this by lying about his religion. This deception reflects a larger pattern where Hindu women are specifically singled out using false identities by Muslim men. Such targeted victimisation based on religion demonstrates a fundamental disregard for Hinduism and exposes deeper animosity towards Hindu women and their beliefs, making it a religiously driven hate crime. Secondly, the discovery of more than 10 Aadhaar cards bearing different names, together with pictures and videos of multiple Hindu women on Shakib’s phone, demonstrated that the incident extended beyond an isolated interaction with a single victim. The possession of multiple identity documents indicated a deliberate and systematic use of different identities to conceal his actual identity and facilitate access to women, while the material involving several Hindu women pointed to a recurring pattern of targeting Hindu women through deception. These findings strengthened the religious dimension of the case because the concealment of his Muslim identity appeared alongside material involving multiple Hindu women, rather than occurring as a one-off instance. The combination of multiple identities, false religious presentation and material concerning several Hindu women therefore indicated a deliberate method of approaching Hindu women, gaining their trust through fabricated Hindu identities and subsequently exploiting that access. This pattern demonstrated that the religious deception involved in the present case was not an isolated tactic but formed part of a broader practice of targeting Hindu women through concealed identity and manipulation. It is further important to note that the victim was a minor, which meant that genuine consent and an informed change of conscience were absent ab initio. Due to her young age and lack of maturity, she is particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion and is incapable of fully comprehending predatory and malicious religious deception. The Muslim perpetrator exploited this vulnerability by targeting and deceiving the minor Hindu girl. As this case involved religious deception, manipulation and sexual exploitation directed at a minor Hindu girl, it constituted a blatant act of religiously motivated hostility. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the victim’s ordeal begins rather than when it is reported by the media. However, in the current case, media reports have not stated the exact date when the victim’s ordeal began. The only specific date mentioned was when the incident came to light, on 10 September 2026. The only other timeline provided was that the perpetrator had lured the victim into a relationship approximately one year earlier. Based on these two pieces of information, 10 September 2025 has been selected as the indicative incident date. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only. The Hinduphobia Tracker recorded the victim count as '1' in this case. Although references were made to multiple women in connection with the material found on the accused’s phone, the available reports had not specified the total number of victims. Only one victim had been identified in connection with the present case. Therefore, the victim count was kept as one. This represented a conservative estimate based on the information available in the media reports.