Minor Hindu girl commits suicide after Muslim youth uploads her obscene videos on social media, would use videos to threaten her to convert to Islam
Lakhimpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
2 November, 2023
Case Summary
In the Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh, a 17-year-old girl committed suicide by hanging herself on 3rd November after a youth named Mohammad Zohid Akhtar and his accomplices made the girl’s obscene videos viral on social media. A case was registered in the matter and the accused Zohid was arrested. The matter pertains to the Sampoorna Nagar police station precinct wherein accused Zohid Akhtar allegedly lured the minor Hindu girl into a relationship and recorded her private videos and pictures. Zohid Akhtar used these obscene videos to threaten and blackmail the victim to convert to Islam and perform Nikah with him.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been published here because it satisfies two particular requirements of religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindu women. The first factor is that the accused forced the victim to convert to Islam before marriage and forcefully performed nikah with the Hindu girl. 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. The relationship in such cases is mostly 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. In such cases, 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 component in this case which makes it worthy of being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime is that unable to withstand the coercion to convert from the Muslim accused, the Hindu victim committed suicide. When Hindu women are in a relationship with a non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman faces pressure/threats/violence to convert and change her religious identity by the non-Hindu man. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim. Somewhere along the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts pressurizing the Hindu woman to convert. In some of these cases, unable to bear the pressure/threat/violence being mounted by the non-Hindu partner to convert, the Hindu woman commits suicide. In such cases, often, threats are also given to the family members of the Hindu woman. Since such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim, leading to the woman committing suicide, these cases are categorized as a hate crime.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
1
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 
