Hindu girl deceived, gang-raped and blackmailed by Muslim man faking Hindu identity; held captive and threatened with murder

Case ID : 9958809 | Location : Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 22 September, 2015

Case ID : 9958809

Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

22 September, 2015

Hindu girl deceived, gang-raped and blackmailed by Muslim man faking Hindu identity; held captive and threatened with murder

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

In Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu girl was deceived, blackmailed, and raped by a Muslim man named Mursaleen. The accused posed as a Hindu to trap the victim. According to reports, the victim came into contact with the accused, who was working as a village watchman, in 2015, while she was still a student. The accused obtained her mobile number and introduced himself as a Hindu man named Manoj Sharma. They began chatting on WhatsApp and gradually developed a relationship. When her family came to know about this relationship, they fixed her marriage in Budhana on 31 July 2018. However, Mursaleen used fake numbers and threatened her husband and in-laws, which resulted in the breakup of the marriage in February 2019. After she returned to her parents’ home, the Muslim accused manipulated the victim into staying with him in a rented house under the pretext of marriage. The accused later took the victim to a restaurant where he, along with his friends, raped her and recorded a video of the assault. He held her hostage in a room, during which she discovered that his real name was Mursaleen, he was married, and that he was a Muslim. Furthermore, the accused and his accomplice even attempted to murder her. Subsequently, the victim filed a complaint with the police. A case was registered against Mursaleen under multiple sections, including rape, blackmail, and attempted murder. As of the date of writing this report, the investigation was ongoing.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first 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. The other sub-category selected here is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - 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 hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu girl was lured into a relationship by a Muslim man, who pretended to be Hindu. The perpetrator deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with a Hindu girl. This is a clear manifestation of bias and malicious intent towards the victim's religion. By concealing his true identity, he exploited her trust, targeting her under false pretences. This indicates a premeditated intent to manipulate her based on her religious background. In cases like these, the tactic of adopting a false Hindu identity to manipulate and "ensnare" a Hindu individual is not just an act of personal betrayal but can also be interpreted as an expression of disdain or disregard for Hinduism and its customs, reflecting a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. In addition to deception, the victim was gang-raped, blackmailed, and held hostage by the perpetrator, who even attempted to murder her. While sexual violence and blackmail could appear as crimes of personal exploitation in isolation, here they were combined with deliberate religious deception. By concealing his Muslim identity and presenting himself as a Hindu man, the perpetrator specifically targeted the victim because she was Hindu. In such cases, sexual violence, blackmail, and coercion function as tools within a larger framework of religiously motivated hostility. These acts are not only personal violations but also assaults on the dignity and security of a Hindu girl as a representative of her faith community. By erasing her agency through rape and threats while exploiting her trust via a fabricated Hindu identity, the crime transcends individual wrongdoing and constitutes a hate crime rooted in contempt for Hinduism. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began, though it is mentioned that she came into contact with the accused in 2015. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—September 23, 2015—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on September 23, 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.