Minor Hindu girl lured for attempted sexual assault by Muslim man posing as Hindu; accused's phone reveals obscene images of several women

Case ID : 3234549 | Location : Hubli, Karnataka, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 9 October, 2025

Case ID : 3234549

Hubli, Karnataka, India

9 October, 2025

Minor Hindu girl lured for attempted sexual assault by Muslim man posing as Hindu; accused's phone reveals obscene images of several women

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Pattern of targeting Hindu women

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

In Hubballi, Karnataka, a minor Hindu girl was befriended by a Muslim man named Syed Rahana, who was pretending to be Hindu. The accused lured the victim to a deserted place where he attempted to sexually assault her. According to reports, the accused befriended the minor Hindu girl by introducing himself as a Hindu man named Ramesh. He gradually gained the girl's trust under his false identity and persuaded her to accompany him to a remote field, with the intention of sexually assaulting her. However, locals grew suspicious of their presence and confronted them. Upon questioning the man, they discovered that his real name was Syed Rahana, and he was a Muslim. Examination of his mobile phone revealed multiple obscene videos and photographs of women, indicating a pattern of predatory behaviour. Angered by the deception and the potential danger to the girl, the locals thrashed the youth before handing him over to the police. A video later surfaced on social media, where the accused publicly confessed to his crimes, apologising and claiming that he would not repeat them. The police registered a case against Syed under the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act due to the victim's age and began investigating whether Syed was linked to a larger network. Officers reviewed his mobile data and communication records to identify other potential victims or accomplices. The incident triggered widespread outrage across Hubballi and neighbouring districts. Several citizens’ groups and community leaders demanded stringent action, calling this a classic example of systematic grooming under false religious identity. They urged the government to take proactive steps to identify and dismantle such networks that prey upon unsuspecting women, particularly minors.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first subcategory under this is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary categories under this 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - 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 the purpose of 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was deceived into a relationship and taken to a deserted area for attempted sexual exploitation by the Muslim accused. The perpetrator deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with a Hindu girl. This itself is a clear manifestation of bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. By concealing his true identity, he exploited her trust, targeting her under false pretences. This indicates a premeditated intent to manipulate her based on her religious background. In cases like these, the tactic of adopting a false Hindu identity to manipulate and "ensnare" a Hindu individual is not just an act of personal betrayal but can also be interpreted as an expression of disdain or disregard for Hinduism and its customs that reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. The crime falls under grooming and manipulation, as demonstrated by the manner in which Syed Rahana systematically gained the minor Hindu girl’s trust before revealing his true identity and attempting sexual assault. The sequence of events—befriending her under a false Hindu name, luring her to a secluded location, and then trying to exploit her—clearly shows that the act was premeditated rather than a spontaneous crime of passion. In such cases, sexual assault or attempted sexual assault is not driven by sexual gratification, but constitutes a religiously targeted attack on the Hindu victim, in which she is profiled and assaulted for her religious identity. Such crimes are motivated by religious animosity and amount to a hate crime. 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 getting into a relationship, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Additionally, any supposed consent given by the victim is considered invalid under the POCSO Act. Since this case exemplifies the use of coercion and manipulation for sexual exploitation, it is a blatant act of religious hate, which is why it has been documented here in the hate tracker. Additionally, the recovery of multiple obscene images of women from his phone points to a disturbing pattern of targeted exploitation based on religious identity. Given that the accused targeted one victim—a minor Hindu girl—by posing as a Hindu, it is not a stretch to conclude that the other women were also Hindus, similarly deceived and exploited through religious impersonation. This establishes that the assault was not a spontaneous act, but part of a systematic method to entrap and exploit Hindu women. The repeated targeting of victims from the same religious community reveals a deep-rooted religious bias, making the hate-driven nature of this crime unmistakably clear. This is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of religiously motivated hate crimes. The Hinduphobia tracker has documented multiple cases where non-Hindu men pretended to be Hindu to befriend Hindu women for sexual exploitation or religious conversion. For example, in Bahadarabad, Haridwar district, Uttarakhand, a Hindu woman was blackmailed and raped by a Muslim man named Iqbal, who had faked a Hindu identity to entrap her. Similarly, in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived and sexually exploited by a Muslim man named Sufian, who impersonated a Hindu man on social media to lure her. In another case in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman, mother of a six-year-old child, was deceived, forcibly converted to Islam, and kept in captivity. The perpetrator, Ehsan Hussain, pretended to be Hindu and trapped her in a fabricated love affair, coerced her into abandoning her faith, renamed her Khushboo Khatun, and forcibly married her before relocating her to Chennai. These incidents collectively highlight a pattern in which Hindu women are specifically targeted through deception for sexual exploitation and religious conversion, underscoring a systematic hostility towards Hindu individuals and their religious beliefs. Given that this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated crime, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began, rather than when it is reported in the media. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media, 10 October 2025. This is an indicative date of the incident.