Hindu woman from trapped, raped, and exploited by Muslim man disguised as Hindu; accused duped her financially

Case ID : 8da15cc | Location : Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 22 March, 2023

Case ID : 8da15cc

Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

22 March, 2023

Hindu woman from trapped, raped, and exploited by Muslim man disguised as Hindu; accused duped her financially

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

A Hindu woman was lured into a relationship and exploited by a Muslim man disguised as a Hindu in a village under the Mundali area of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. The 35-year-old woman from Alwar district, Rajasthan, who worked in wedding decoration, befriended a man named Ikrar Tyagi from Ajrada village on Instagram in 2023. At that time, Ikrar was employed as a driver in Saudi Arabia. He introduced himself as a Hindu and gradually trapped the woman in a love affair by promising marriage and a job abroad. When Ikrar returned from Saudi Arabia to Meerut a few days ago, he called the woman to meet him, took her to hotels, and raped her. Afterwards, when she pressed him to marry her, he revealed his true religious identity and threatened to kill her if she spoke about it. The woman, who has no parents and lives with her uncles, lodged a complaint with the police. However, the local police outpost kept the matter suppressed for nearly a week as individuals linked to the accused attempted to influence the case. The victim later approached the Ajrada police outpost directly, demanding justice. The accused’s associates threatened to kill her for pursuing the complaint. Members of Hindu organisations intervened after learning about the incident and helped her reach higher authorities. Following this, the police recorded her statement under Section 161 and later before a magistrate, where she confirmed that the accused had concealed his religion, deceived her with false promises, and subjected her to physical and mental exploitation. The Circle Officer of Kithore, Pramod Kumar Singh, confirmed that a case had been registered and the accused was sent to jail. The victim also revealed that Ikrar had presented himself as a poor man and repeatedly asked her for money, which she sent several times. In total, he extorted several lakhs of rupees from her while destroying both her dignity and financial security.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory under this is: Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category under this is: Name Changed. 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. Another subcategory under this is: Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary category under this is: 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 included in the Hinduphobia Tracker because it demonstrates a deliberate and religiously motivated act of deception and exploitation directed against a Hindu woman on account of her faith. The primary basis for its inclusion lies in the fact that the Muslim perpetrator concealed his religious identity, deliberately assumed a Hindu name, and used that false identity to manipulate, exploit, and ultimately destroy the life of a Hindu woman. The element of deception was not incidental or personal but designed to gain the victim’s trust by erasing the religious distinction between them, thereby facilitating both sexual exploitation and financial extortion under false pretences. The man’s act of disguising himself as a Hindu constitutes a conscious strategy that transforms what might otherwise appear as a personal crime into one rooted in religious malice. By misrepresenting his religion, the perpetrator targeted the victim specifically as a Hindu woman who, under ordinary circumstances, would not have entered into an intimate relationship with him. The exploitation that followed, rape, threats of death, and financial manipulation, was the culmination of a sustained pattern of deceit originating in religious fraud. The case further reflects a typical progression seen in several recorded incidents of religiously motivated grooming, where a non-Hindu man pretends to belong to the Hindu faith in order to initiate intimacy, secure emotional dependency, and later assert dominance once the victim is psychologically or socially trapped. The woman in this case was isolated, with no parents and limited family support, a circumstance that made her especially vulnerable to coercion and manipulation. The accused’s revelation of his true identity only after exploiting her physically and financially underscores his malicious intention, showing that religion was not incidental to the crime but a deliberate instrument of deception. While the incident involved rape, coercion, and financial extortion, these crimes were not committed randomly but through a method of religious impersonation aimed at deceiving a Hindu woman into a false relationship. The intent was not merely personal gratification or monetary gain but the exploitation of a Hindu woman through religious deceit, a practice that reflects animus towards her religious identity and the exploitation of that identity as a means of subjugation. Therefore, this case is recorded as a hate crime against Hindus because the deception and violence were inseparable from the perpetrator’s religiously motivated intent. The act of hiding one’s religion to gain proximity to a Hindu woman, followed by her exploitation, constitutes both an assault on her individual dignity and an attack upon her identity as a Hindu woman. It exemplifies the broader phenomenon of targeting Hindu women through religious deceit, thereby making this case a clear instance of Hinduphobic hate crime.