Hindu woman of Mira Road drugged, raped, forced to convert to Islam after rejecting proposal, Mohsin Sheikh arrested
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 
25 April, 2024
Case Summary
In Mumbai's Mira Road area, accused Mohsin Sheikh forced a Hindu woman to convert to Islam after she rejected his marriage proposal. The incident unfolded after Sheikh fed her Biryani laced with a toxic substance, causing her to lose consciousness. Upon regaining consciousness, she found herself undressed. Sheikh then demanded her conversion to Islam and threatened to release derogatory videos of her if she refused. “He told me that he wanted me to get converted to Islam and wear a burqa and behave like Muslims. But I denied and burned the burqa,” the victim said. Over several months, he sexually exploited and blackmailed her, even forcibly taking her to a mosque and physically assaulting her. Additionally, he extorted money and gold from her. In March, Sheikh raped her again, shaving her head bald when she refused to convert and marry him. His family later assaulted her. Following these events, the victim filed a complaint with the Nayanagar police station. The FIR names Mohsin Sheikh and several others, including Imran Bagwan, Jafar Sheikh, Mobin Sheikh, Ashfaq Sheikh, and Shahjaan Sheikh. Mohsin has been arrested, admitting to exploiting the woman.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
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 on discriminatory grounds which have the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right 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 and forceful circumcision. In several cases documented, 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 in an attempt to make the Hindu victim abandon his/her professed religion and adopt the religion of the perpetrator. In this sub-category, we would include cases where the non-Hindu perpetrator harassed, threatened or coerced the victim to convert, however, the Hindu victim did not convert to another faith. Cases where the victim was converted owing to the harassment and threats would be documented in another sub-category. 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. In this specific case, there are several threads of extreme violence, blackmail, sexual exploitation and threats for the purpose of forcefully converting the Hindu woman to Islam. Since the underlying motivation of the perpetrator was to disenfranchise the victim from her professed faith and forcefully convert her to his own religion, this case has been categorised as a religiously motivated hate crime.
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 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 5 to 10
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
