Tutor Afzal traps, rapes and forces 14-year-old Hindu girl to convert to Islam, arrested
Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India 
7 January, 2023
Case Summary
A youth named Afzal, a resident of Hamirpur district, who used to tutor a fourteen-year-old minor in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, lured her into a relationship before he ran away with her. He then raped her, forced her to change her religion to Islam and made her wear a burqa. Following his child's disappearance, the minor's father filed a missing person's report. Under the Religion Conversion Act, POCSO, and rape sections, police traced the girl's location and detained the accused Afzal. According to the victim’s family, Afzal, a resident of the Hamirpur district, lured their 14-year-old daughter into a love trap and took her away on Monday afternoon. On the complaint of the father, the police registered a case. Following this, on Friday, the girl’s location was traced and police reached the spot. When police reached the spot, the girl was found standing at a station wearing a burqa. The girl told the police that the accused Afzal had raped her. At the same time, he also pressured her to change religion. Based on the girl’s statement, the police registered a case and arrested the accused, and sent him to jail.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
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. In this case, the minor girl was lured into a "relationship" by the adult Muslim perpetrator. The perpetrator was her tutor and therefore, already had a fiduciary relationship with her. That trust was misused to lure her into a "relationship". The victim child was 14 years old and therefore, had no agency to consent to a relationship and the perpetrator had committed a crime ab initio. What makes this crime religiously motivated is that the family of the girl and the girl herself testified that the perpetrator forced her to convert to Islam and follow non-Hindu religious practices like wearing a Burqa. It is, therefore, evident that the crime was religiously motivated and is therefore being 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 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
