Minor Hindu girl sexually exploited, blackmailed, pressured to convert to Islam and assaulted after refusing by Muslim man in Sangli, Maharashtra

Case ID : 30aaa0b | Location : Sangli, Maharashtra, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 28 September, 2026

Case ID : 30aaa0b

Sangli, Maharashtra, India

28 September, 2026

Minor Hindu girl sexually exploited, blackmailed, pressured to convert to Islam and assaulted after refusing by Muslim man in Sangli, Maharashtra

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Blackmailed to convert

Assault or threat upon refusal to convert

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for refusal to convert

Case Summary

In Kokale village, Sangli district, Maharashtra, a Hindu minor girl was sexually exploited and subjected to sustained pressure to convert to Islam by 29-year-old Muslim man Imran Abbas Pakhali. He targeted the victim for nearly two years, during which the sexual exploitation began while she was still a minor and continued for an extended period. The incident came to light when the victim was an adult and revealed the ordeal she had suffered in connection with her Hindu faith identity at the hands of Imran. The victim revealed that she first came into contact with Imran through social media, where he initially approached her by providing emotional support and gradually developed a close relationship with her. The sexual exploitation began while she was still a minor, during which Imran recorded intimate and obscene photographs and videos of her on his mobile phone and subsequently used the material to blackmail and intimidate her. Imran repeatedly threatened to misuse the recordings and extracted approximately ₹17 lakh from the victim at different times. The possession of the intimate material enabled him to maintain control over her and continue the exploitation over an extended period. The ordeal later acquired a religious dimension when Imran began pressuring the Hindu victim to convert to Islam. When she refused to convert, Imran assaulted her, during which she suffered a fractured arm. Imran also shared the victim's personal information and contact details with his relative and friend, 32-year-old Mohsin Mulani, a resident of Sangli. The victim stated that Mohsin subsequently pressured her to establish physical relations with him. When she refused, Imran sent her intimate photographs and videos to her husband, children and other relatives, extending the coercion from private blackmail to humiliation before members of her immediate family. The case took on a wider dimension during a press conference conducted by Nitin Chougule, founder-president of Shri Shivpratishthan Yuva Hindustan, a Hindu organisation. Chougule presented a pen drive containing material connected with the case and demanded strict action against Imran. During the press conference, it was stated that Imran's mobile phone contained nude photographs and videos of around 20 other women. However, these claims had not been independently verified and remained subject to police investigation. A separate allegation also surfaced during the press conference concerning the possible involvement of a female corporator from Sangli, who was accused of helping Imran. Her precise role had not been established, and the status of the allegation remained subject to the police investigation. The victim approached Sangli City Police Station, following which a case was registered on the night of September 29, 2026, against Imran Abbas Pakhali and Mohsin Mulani under provisions concerning rape, fraud, intimidation, abuse and other offences connected with the exploitation. Imran was subsequently arrested. Police produced Imran before the court, which remanded him to police custody until October 3, 2026. Police Inspector Arun Sugavkar was overseeing the investigation into the sexual exploitation, obscene digital material, ₹17 lakh financial transactions, pressure to convert, physical assault, circulation of the victim's private material and the role of Mohsin Mulani. The victim sought the death penalty for Imran, citing the prolonged sexual exploitation, blackmail, financial coercion, pressure to convert, physical violence and circulation of her intimate material.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The first primary category selected for this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected for this case 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 primary category selected is: Crimes against women in relationship or other sexual crimes. The 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 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. The other subcategory selected 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 pressurizing 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 third primary category selected is: Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory selected is: Attacked for refusal to convert. When there is pressure, threat or coercion employed upon the Hindu victim to convert to a different religion, in several cases, the victim refuses to succumb to the pressure/threats. Once the victim refuses, the perpetrator proceeds to attack/assault the victim owing to his/her refusal to convert. In such cases, the pressure/threat/intimidation/coercion/violence itself is driven by animosity towards the victim’s Hindu faith. The violence then is another hate crime driven by the victim’s refusal to abandon his professed faith, Hinduism, and convert to the religion of a non-Hindu perpetrator. Since the victim’s faith is at the heart of the pressure to convert and the ensuing violence towards the victim, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case is a clear example of a religiously motivated hate crime because a minor Hindu girl was lured into a relationship, sexually exploited and subjected to sustained pressure to convert to Islam by a Muslim man in Maharashtra. The sexual exploitation formed part of the broader pattern of abuse directed at the victim. She was sexually exploited, and obscene photographs and videos of her were recorded before she was pressured to convert to Islam. The perpetrator's actions created a means of control that was used to further exploit and coerce her. The sexual abuse and recording of intimate material undermined the victim's dignity, autonomy and emotional security, leaving her vulnerable to subsequent religious coercion. Using sexual exploitation as a means of exerting control over a Hindu victim while attempting to compel her conversion constituted religiously driven sexual violence and demonstrated the religious motivation underlying the crime. The victim's status as a minor further intensified the severity of the offence. Her young age and lack of maturity made her particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion, while limiting her ability to understand the long-term consequences of an adult relationship and decisions concerning her religious identity. Any purported change of religious conscience under such circumstances could not be regarded as a free and informed decision. Exploiting a minor's vulnerability while subjecting her to sexual abuse and targeting her for religious conversion demonstrated the predatory nature of the crime. The abuse of an unequal relationship of power and trust to interfere with her religious identity further reinforced the coercive character of the offence. The pressure to convert the Hindu victim to Islam demonstrated clear religious animosity because the perpetrator sought to interfere with her Hindu identity and compel her to abandon her faith. The attempt to forcibly replace her religious identity with another faith showed that her adherence to Hinduism was not respected and was instead treated as something that had to be eradicated. Targeting the victim with sustained pressure to renounce her religion directly attacked her religious identity. The deliberate attempt to remove her from her faith against her will demonstrated hostility towards Hinduism and the Hindu community. The use of blackmail and threats as tools to carry out the attempted conversion further demonstrated religious animosity. Imran used intimate photographs and videos of the victim as instruments of coercion, creating fear of exposure and humiliation to pressure her into abandoning her Hindu faith. Using threats and blackmail to achieve religious conversion showed that the objective was not to persuade the victim to adopt another faith, but to overpower her ability to exercise her religious choice. The weaponisation of private material to force the victim towards another religion therefore demonstrated hostility towards her Hindu identity and a willingness to violate her autonomy to achieve the desired religious outcome. The use of violence when the victim refused to convert further demonstrated religious animosity. When she rejected the demand to abandon Hinduism, Imran assaulted her, causing her to suffer a fractured arm. The violence was used to punish her refusal to relinquish her faith and compel her towards religious compliance. Resorting to physical force because a Hindu victim chose to retain her religion demonstrated that her Hindu identity was being treated as an obstacle that had to be overcome through violence. The assault therefore reflected hostility towards her Hindu faith and demonstrated the extreme coercive measures employed to force her religious abandonment. The victim was subsequently subjected to further sexual exploitation, and when she refused to establish physical relations with Mohsin Mulani, her intimate photographs and videos were shared with her husband, children and other relatives. The deliberate circulation of her private material exposed her to humiliation and was used as retaliation for resisting further exploitation. In the context of the preceding pressure to abandon her Hindu faith, threats and physical violence, this act formed part of a broader pattern of coercive abuse directed at a victim who had resisted the demands imposed upon her. The weaponisation of her intimate material to punish and intimidate her further demonstrated the hostility and coercive control surrounding the religious and sexual abuse she had endured. Given that this case met multiple parameters of a religiously driven offence, it was added to the Hinduphobia Tracker's hate crime database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a victim's ordeal begins rather than when the incident is reported by the media. However, in this case, media reports did not state the exact date on which the victim's ordeal began. They only stated that the victim filed a complaint on September 29, 2026, and that she had been sexually exploited for two years. As the exact date on which the ordeal began and a specific timeframe were not provided, an indicative incident date of September 29, 2026, was selected for documentation purposes only. In this case, although the main perpetrator was Imran Abbas Pakhali, another Muslim man, Mohsin Mulani, also targeted the victim for sexual exploitation. When she refused, her intimate photographs and videos were subsequently shared with her husband and family members. Henceforth, the perpetrator count was recorded as two for documentation purposes only.