Hindu women lured and groomed by Muslim man who introduced himself as a Hindu

Case ID : 90a09a2 | Location : Amravati, Maharashtra, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 25 February, 2025

Case ID : 90a09a2

Amravati, Maharashtra, India

25 February, 2025

Hindu women lured and groomed by Muslim man who introduced himself as a Hindu

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

A 23-year-old Hindu woman named Arpita Sarkar was lured, trapped and groomed by a Muslim man named Mizanur Gazi and held hostage in Maharashtra's Amravati city. The victim was originally a resident of Basirhat city in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. The victim in her video statement said that the Muslim man introduced himself as a Hindu named Rohan. Thereafter, she was abducted, tortured and threatened. A Hindu activist named Devdutt Maji, president of Singha Bahini, managed to rescue the Hindu woman from a Muslim dominated area named Habib Nagar. She was rescued on 26th February 2025. Devdutt Maji along with his group of Hindu activists travelled to Amravati and rescued the girl. The girl was then re-united with her parents and Devdutt Maji shared a video of this on his official X handle on 1st March 2025. According to his post, the girl and her parents received threats from Muslims and the family members of Mizanur Gazi. Devdutt Maji stated, "We are committed to rescue our daughters from Love Jihad and also raise awareness on Love Jihad and Demography Change."

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to two primary categories. The first is "Crimes against women in relationship and other sexual crimes". 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 victim in her video testimony admitted that she knew the man and he had introduced himself as a Hindu called Rohan. It is only later that she learnt his real religious identity. When a Muslim man pretends to be Hindu to lure a Hindu woman, it becomes evident that the victim was profiled based on her religious identity. It strips the woman of her agency and rights. The second category this case is being added to is 'attack not resulting in death' under the sub-category 'attacked for Hindu identity'. In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. The Muslim man who lured the Hindu woman under a false religious identity then abducted the girl and threatened her family of dire consequences. Such actions are driven purely by religious hostility and the crime itself is based on the religious identity of the victim. For that reason, this case is being added to the Hinduphobia Tracker.