Minor Hindu girl lured, sexually exploited and pressured to convert to Islam by Muslim man faking Hindu identity in Tanakpur, Uttarakhand
Tanakpur, Uttarakhand, India 
27 April, 2025
Case Summary
In Tanakpur, Champawat district, Uttarakhand, a Hindu girl was sexually exploited by a 22-year-old Muslim man named Nishad Khan. He concealed his religious identity and introduced himself as a Hindu to establish a relationship with her. After she discovered his actual identity, he pressured her to convert to Islam, marry him through nikah, and blackmailed her into circulating her private photographs upon refusing. As per the victim's complaint, the incident began approximately one and a half years earlier, in April, 2025, when the victim was a minor. The victim formally submitted a written complaint at Kotwali Tanakpur police station on 28 September 2026. In the complaint, she stated that Nishad Khan, son of Naseeb Hussain, a resident of Manihargoth, was a photographer. The victim stated that she was initially unaware that he was Muslim. He falsely introduced himself as a Hindu, lured her into a friendship and became close to her. He formed a relationship hiding his identity. She stated that subsequently, physical relations took place between them. The victim stated that after she checked his Gmail account, she discovered his true identity. Upon discovering his real identity, the accused pressured the victim to adopt Islam and marry him through Nikah. She opposed the pressure and maintained her religious identity. She further stated that Nishad threatened her with circulating her private photographs on social media if she did not comply and abused her and her family. The victim also stated that the accused had been sexually exploiting her since she was a minor. She further mentioned that he used to lure Hindu girls by creating identity cards with Hindu names. Following the complaint, police registered a case against Nishad Khan under Sections 69, 78 and 351(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Uttarakhand Religious Freedom Act and Sections 5 and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. The case also included provisions concerning the threats to circulate the girl's photographs and the other offences described in her complaint. The arrest was carried out following directions from Champawat Superintendent of Police Rekha Yadav for prompt statutory action in cases involving offences against women. Sub-Inspector Gurvinder Kaur, head constable Navindra Mehra, constable Hitendra Verma and female constable Shobha Sharma were part of the police team involved in the arrest. Nishad Khan was arrested from Manihargoth, Tanakpur, and police recorded his statement before beginning further investigation. The police stated that further evidence was being collected and that additional statutory action would be taken as the investigation progressed.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category: Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected within it 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 in discriminatory grounds, which have the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his rights 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 documented cases, 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 sub-category selected is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within this, the subcategory selected is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category selected is: 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 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 selected here is: Forced conversion before marriage, with the tertiary category being 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 to his 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 third subcategory selected 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 as 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. The fourth sub-category selected for this case is: Assault or threat upon refusal to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces threats or assault after she refuses to convert and change her religious identity owing to pressure/force by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual, with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurising the Hindu woman to convert to Islam and, upon her refusal, assaults or threatens the victim. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. Cases where the Hindu woman converts to Islam and does not file a complaint about the force or threat are not considered a part of the hate tracker, even though it may be argued that the woman was brainwashed or threatened to convert to Islam. The incident in Tanakpur constituted a religiously motivated hate crime because the conduct of the accused, examined in its entirety, revealed a sequence of acts that were not merely criminal in the general sense but were specifically directed at the victim by reason of her Hindu religious identity. At the outset, the perpetrator chose to present himself as Hindu and concealed his Muslim identity only to gain the victim’s trust to enter a relationship. The perpetrator systematically concealed his Islamic faith and adopted a fabricated Hindu persona to bypass the victim's social and religious boundaries. It is important to note here that the perpetrator had knowledge that the victim would not otherwise consent to this relationship. This foundational deception was not incidental to what followed; it was the precondition for everything that followed. The victim’s Hindu religious identity was, from the very first moment of contact, the specific quality being targeted and manipulated. Furthermore, this was a well-planned, systematic pattern by the perpetrator to target Hindu girls by creating forged identity cards with Hindu names to exploit the trust of Hindu girls. It was the primary mechanism used to isolate the victim and initiate a relationship that they would not have otherwise consented to had his true religious identity been known. The exploitation of a minor victim further defined the religious malice. The accused deliberately initiated contact with a minor to manipulate her vulnerabilities. Because she was legally incapable of consent, the relationship relied entirely on the trust cultivated through his fabricated Hindu identity. This systematic exploitation aligned with the perpetrator's use of his false religious persona to extract compliance and maintain control over the minor victim. The grooming was distinctly driven by a religious motive, as the deception explicitly capitalised on her Hindu background to facilitate the abuse. The seamless shift from inducement to assault upon her refusal exposed that the accused had never viewed her Hindu identity as a neutral fact about her. He viewed it as an obstacle, and he was willing to deploy progressively severe coercion until that obstacle was removed. Furthermore, the recordings of the sexual exploitation were subsequently used to blackmail her, not for financial gain, but as a mechanism of coercive control directed, ultimately, at compelling her to abandon her Hindu religious identity. The blackmail and the conversion demand were not separate crimes that happened to coincide; the blackmail was the instrument through which the conversion was to be extracted. The use of blackmail and intimidation to force religious compliance further established the incident as a hate crime. This coercion was explicitly intended to break her resistance to religious conversion. The threats were a direct retaliation against her refusal to surrender her Hindu faith. This confirmed that the abuse and blackmail were fundamentally rooted in religious animosity and were intended to proselytise. It is further important to note here that the victim was a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. 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. This incident, similarly, was not a case where a relationship developed and religious differences created friction. This was a case where the religious identity of the victim was the reason she was targeted, the deception was designed around it, the exploitation was sustained through it, and the blackmail was triggered by her refusal to surrender it. The case, therefore, qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime directed against the victim’s Hindu identity across every stage of the accused’s conduct from the first false introduction to the final threat. Disclaimer: As the exact date the exploitation began was not specified in the reports, the incident date has been recorded as 28 April 2025, reflecting the period approximately one and a half years prior to the filing of the formal complaint. The tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. In this case, 28 April 2025 has been used 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
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
