Muslim man pretends to be Hindu and befriends girl, morphs victim's pictures and send obscene messages after she distances upon finding real identity

Case ID : 388c051 | Location : Guwahati, Assam, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 23 April, 2024

Case ID : 388c051

Guwahati, Assam, India

23 April, 2024

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Case Summary

Mohammad Bilal Hussain was arrested by the Crime Branch team of Guwahati Police for cyberstalking and harassing a girl and her friends using Hindu names. The harassment began in September 2023, with the victims receiving unwanted calls and messages under different names, including Nabjeet Nath and Nabjeet Talukdar. Bilal, pretending to be a Hindu, befriended one of the victims online and gained her trust, even accessing her WhatsApp account. When the victims discovered his true identity and stopped communicating with him, Bilal retaliated by creating and spreading obscene images of them. The police tracked Bilal to Bengaluru, Karnataka, and later arrested him in Dhula, Assam, his hometown. Bilal confessed to his crimes, and the police seized his phone and SIM card. He was sent to five-day police custody after appearing in court.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

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. In this case, the accused and the victim were not exactly in a relationship but he still gained her trust by pretending to be a Hindu. The fact that the accused hid his religious identity is itself proof that he had malicious intentions which was further accentuated by the fact that he started blackmailing the Hindu victim when his real identity was revealed before her, pointing towards a crime with its motivations being driven by religious hate.