Hindu woman lured by Muslim man posing as Hindu; victim’s ‘Om’ tattoo forcibly defaced and replaced with Islamic symbol

Case ID : 30aaab7 | Location : Odisha, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 2 October, 2026

Case ID : 30aaab7

Odisha, India

2 October, 2026

Hindu woman lured by Muslim man posing as Hindu; victim’s ‘Om’ tattoo forcibly defaced and replaced with Islamic symbol

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Desecration of Hindu symbols in relationship

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Odisha, a Hindu woman was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man named Mafidul Islam, who concealed his religious identity and posed as a Hindu. The accused was originally from Nalbari, Assam, and lured the victim away from Odisha and took her to Nalbari with him. After taking her there, he forcibly defaced and altered the ‘Om’ tattoo on her hand, turning it into an Islamic symbol. According to reports, Mafidul Islam, a resident of Mukalmua in Nalbari district and the son of Lal Mian, kept the woman at his residence. Local Hindu organisations learnt about the incident and filed a complaint at the local police station. Following the complaint, a Nalbari Police team raided the residence of Lal Mian. During the raid, police recovered the woman along with cash and jewellery. The preliminary investigation also revealed that the ‘Om’ tattoo on her hand had been altered into an Islamic symbol. As the police raid was underway and Islam realised that police action was imminent, he fled the scene. Nalbari Police subsequently launched a search operation to locate and apprehend him, while further investigation and legal proceedings continued.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The first 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. 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. The other subcategory selected is: Desecration of Hindu religious symbols in relationship. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces insult and desecration of her faith (Hinduism) and its symbol because of the inherent disregard for polytheism of the non-Hindu partner. 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 desecrating the religious symbols of the Hindu partner out of spite for her faith. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. The second primary category selected is: Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory selected is: Attacked for Hindu identity. In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. In this case, a Hindu woman was befriended using a false Hindu identity by the Muslim accused, Mafidul Islam. What began with the concealment of his identity and her being taken away from her home was followed by her being brought to Nalbari, where her Hindu identity was further targeted through the defacement of her ‘Om’ tattoo and its alteration into an Islamic symbol. At the outset, the use of a false identity carried a significant religious dimension because the accused concealed his actual Muslim identity from the Hindu woman when the relationship was formed. This act of deception, in which he posed as a Hindu, demonstrated a clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim’s religion. By hiding his true identity, the Muslim man manipulated the Hindu woman’s trust and targeted her under false pretences, indicating a premeditated effort to exploit her based on her religious background. This constituted a direct violation of her right to make an informed choice about whom she chooses to be in a relationship with, as well as an infringement upon her religious beliefs. Thus, the perpetrator’s deliberate decision to conceal his religious identity strongly underscores the religious motive behind the crime. In such instances, identity concealment is not merely a deceptive tactic for personal reasons but serves as a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling and targeting. The accused was aware that the victim, being Hindu, would likely have refused his advances had she known his true identity, and he circumvented this by lying about his religion. This directly points to a religiously driven intent. This deception reflects a larger pattern in which Hindu women are specifically singled out using false identities by Muslim men, often with coercion or conversion as an objective. Such targeted victimisation based on religion not only demonstrates a fundamental disregard for Hinduism but also exposes a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. Further, the fact that the perpetrator forcibly defaced the ‘Om’ tattoo on the victim’s body and replaced it with an Islamic symbol amounts to the desecration of a sacred Hindu symbol. ‘Om’ is one of the most sacred symbols in Hinduism and is regarded as a representation of the divine and the primordial sound associated with creation. Hindu devotees often use the symbol as an expression of their faith and spiritual identity, including by wearing it or having it tattooed on their bodies as a personal and enduring expression of their religious beliefs. Therefore, forcibly defacing the ‘Om’ symbol was not merely an act of physical alteration but a desecration of a sacred Hindu symbol. The deliberate targeting of a visible expression of the victim’s Hindu identity demonstrates the perpetrator’s deep-seated disdain towards her religious identity and his willingness to desecrate a symbol that held personal and religious significance for her. The act of forcibly defacing the Hindu ‘Om’ tattoo and replacing it with an Islamic symbol was also an attack on the victim’s Hindu religious identity and beliefs. The victim was a Hindu woman and was not practising Islam, yet an Islamic symbol was forcibly imposed upon her body, altering a visible and personal expression of her Hindu faith. This went beyond damaging a religious symbol; it involved imposing a religious marker associated with another faith upon a Hindu woman against her will. By replacing an expression of her Hindu identity with an Islamic symbol, the perpetrator interfered with her ability to express and retain her own religious identity and effectively imposed an alternative religious identity upon her. The act therefore constituted a direct attack on her Hindu faith, beliefs and religious identity, making it a religiously motivated crime. Taken together, the concealment of religious identity and the defacement of a sacred Hindu symbol reflected two distinct forms of hostility towards Hindu religious identity. One had obscured the woman’s understanding of the religious context of the relationship, while the other had directly interfered with a visible expression of her faith. Accordingly, this case has been documented in the Hinduphobia Tracker's Hate Crime Database as an instance of religiously motivated hostility directed against Hinduism and the religious identity of the Hindu community. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the incident occurred. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media, 3rd October 2026.