Hindu schoolgirl trapped by Muslim man, made to wear a burqa and kept with a Muslim family under a new Islamic name
Mauganj, Madhya Pradesh, India 
31 January, 2023
Case Summary
A minor Hindu schoolgirl was systematically lured and sexually assaulted by a Muslim man who exploited social media to orchestrate her abduction and prolonged captivity in Mauganj, Madhya Pradesh. The perpetrator, Salman Khan alias Ibrahim, initially contacted the 16-year-old through a fabricated Instagram account named "Criminal 302111" during February 2023, deliberately concealing his marital status and identity as a father of three. In March 2023, the accused intercepted the minor while she travelled to her educational institution, abducted her and transported her to Rewa by forcing her to wear a burqa, where he confined her within a Muslim household. The victim endured nine months of sexual violence and psychological torment, during which her captors forced her to adopt the Islamic name Khushboo Nisha and threatened her with legal retaliation if she attempted escape or contacted her family. The victim's isolation persisted for eight continuous months within a single room, where she faced additional harassment from the perpetrator's associates. Her family's repeated petitions to authorities initially produced only procedural responses until December 2023, when the minor managed to communicate her location through social media. This development enabled police intervention and her subsequent liberation from captivity. The man was arrested and sent into judicial custody.
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: Forced conversion before marriage. The tertiary category under this is: Forced to wear Hijab. In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. In such cases, typically, two patterns emerge. First, when the relationship is consensual, and the religious identity of the perpetrator is known to the Hindu woman in the relationship, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. The second is when the woman gets into a marriage with the man pretending to share her faith. Later, when the truth is revealed, the man starts pressuring the woman to convert her religion and give up her religious identity. In both the situations, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurizing the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. The second subcategory under this is: Brainwashed and/or groomed. The tertiary categories under this are: Rape and sexual assault/harassment and Conversion of minor. 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. Another primary category in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The first subcategory under this is: Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion. Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The second subcategory under this is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories under this are: Rape and sexual assault/harassment and Conversion of minor. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker because it demonstrates a systematic pattern of targeting a Hindu child for religious eradication through calculated deception and brutal coercion. The crime transcends individual criminality, revealing a clear religious motivation in every stage of the victim's ordeal. The perpetrator's initial creation of a false Hindu identity was not random deception but a strategic necessity. He understood that revealing his actual Muslim identity would immediately terminate contact with the Hindu minor. This deliberate concealment proves the religious dimension was fundamental to his approach from the very beginning. His subsequent actions consistently focused on systematically dismantling the girl's Hindu identity through multiple coordinated methods. The forced imposition of Islamic religious markers, the burqa and a new Islamic name, represents a deliberate assault on her Hindu identity. These were not merely disguises but tools of religious reprogramming, intended to erase her existing cultural and religious existence. The sustained sexual violence served as both physical domination and a weapon of religious humiliation, designed to break her connection to her heritage through trauma and fear. The nine-month captivity demonstrates a persistent effort toward religious conversion through enforced means rather than a momentary criminal impulse. The perpetrator maintained this prolonged campaign specifically because he sought to permanently transform the victim's religious identity, not merely commit a temporary crime. His threats about legal consequences reveal a sophisticated understanding of how to exploit a minor's vulnerabilities to prevent her from seeking help from her Hindu family and community. This case exemplifies the core definition of a religious hate crime: the victim was selected specifically because of her Hindu identity, the methods employed focused on destroying that identity, and the ultimate objective was its forced replacement. The systematic nature of this process, from false identity to forced religious markers to sustained exploitation, proves the religious animosity driving these actions. We document this case as Hinduphobia because it shows how Hindu children are being systematically targeted for religious eradication through methods that combine psychological manipulation with physical violence, treating their faith as something to be brutally erased rather than respectfully engaged. Disclaimer: Media reports do not specify the exact date when the victim’s ordeal formally began, though they confirm that the initial contact between the minor and the perpetrator occurred through Instagram in February 2023. As the Hinduphobia Tracker records cases from the earliest identifiable point at which the exploitation or grooming process started, a provisional placeholder date of 1 February 2023 has been used for documentation purposes. This ensures consistency in recording the beginning of the victim’s ordeal, even when the precise day is not provided by available sources.
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 
