Minor tribal Hindu girl deceived and lured into relationship by Muslim man pretending to be Hindu

Case ID : 8da1991 | Location : Barpeta, Assam, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 25 August, 2025

Case ID : 8da1991

Barpeta, Assam, India

25 August, 2025

Minor tribal Hindu girl deceived and lured into relationship by Muslim man pretending to be Hindu

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Case Summary

In Barpeta, Assam, a minor tribal Hindu girl was lured into a romantic relationship by a Muslim man who pretended to be Hindu. According to media reports, the accused was identified as Ashraful Haque, a youth from Barpeta Road. The incident came to light when he was arrested for deceiving the tribal Hindu girl by posing as a Hindu named Buddhanath alias Baidyanath. The accused lured the girl under the pretence of love while concealing his true identity. The police rescued the girl from Barpeta Road railway station and took Ashraful Haque into custody for further investigation. He was attempting to take the girl away to sell her. At the time of reporting, authorities were probing the case to uncover more details and determine the full extent of the deception. A video of a Hindu activist went viral on social media regarding this case. The activist stated, "Last night, around 2 AM, we received information that a suspected youth was taking a Bodo girl out of state via train to sell her. We arrived at around 2:30 AM and caught the youth. He gave a Hindu name, Baidyanath, but we suspected deceit and questioned him further; eventually, he revealed his real name as Ashraful Haque, son of Najrul Islam, resident of Bijni. The girl was rescued." Furthermore, the activist also demanded that the Assam government make strong laws against such cases of religious profiling and targeting of Hindu minor girls and women. Local media reports include a testimony from the accused in which he admitted to deceiving the girl by using a false Hindu identity. He stated that he met the girl while he was in the area for work and subsequently started a relationship with her. This incident raised significant concerns about the prevalence of false identity scams targeting Hindu girls in the region.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The subcategory selected is- Man pretends to be Hindu. The tertiary category selected 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. In this case, the Hindu victim was deliberately deceived into a relationship by a Muslim man who falsely pretended to be Hindu. This act of deception by assuming a Hindu identity clearly demonstrates a bias and malicious intent towards the victim’s religion. By concealing his true identity, the perpetrator manipulated the Hindu girl's trust, targeting her under false pretences, which indicates a premeditated effort to exploit her based on her religious background. This constitutes a direct violation of her right to transparency in choosing a partner and an affront to her religious beliefs. The deliberate concealment of his religious identity underscores the religious motive behind this crime. Identity concealment here was not merely a personal deception but a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling and targeted exploitation. The accused knew that the victim, being Hindu, would likely reject his advances if aware of his true faith, and thus chose to lie. This reflects a larger pattern where Hindu minor girls and women are specifically targeted by Muslim men using false identities, often with coercive or exploitative intent. Such religiously motivated victimisation reveals a fundamental disregard for Hinduism and exposes entrenched hostility towards Hindus and their beliefs. Additionally, since the victim was a minor, the element of informed consent was absent from the outset. Minors, by virtue of their age and maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. The perpetrator knowingly exploited this vulnerability, reflecting a deliberate abuse of power for religiously motivated exploitation. This case exemplifies coercion and manipulation to target a Hindu girl based on religion, constituting a blatant act of religious hate, which warrants documentation in the hate crime tracker. Furthermore, the accused’s intention to sell the girl reflects an extreme level of hatred and dehumanisation directed at her because of her Hindu identity. This is a clear instance of an anti-Hindu hate crime, demonstrating profound animosity toward an individual’s religious identity. Given that this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated crime, it has been added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on the date when the crime occurred or when the victim’s ordeal began, rather than when it was reported in the media. In this case, as media reports have not specified the exact date when the victim’s ordeal started, the date when the incident was reported in the media—26th August 2025—is used as the indicative date for documentation purposes. This approach is taken solely for record-keeping and transparency, ensuring that the incident is documented consistently with the Tracker’s guidelines.