Minor Hindu girl subjected to sustained sexual exploitation, intimidation, and coercive pressure for religious conversion by Muslim man
Ghatampur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
2 February, 2026
Case Summary
In the Ghatampur area of Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a minor Hindu girl was lured into a relationship and subjected to sustained sexual exploitation, intimidation, and coercive pressure for religious conversion by a Muslim man named Amir Zaidi. The victim stated that the accused, Amir Zaidi, son of Haider Ali, lured her into a relationship when she was 16 years old. During this time, the accused sexually exploited her and recorded private videos of her, which he used to blackmail her for further sexual exploitation, over a prolonged period. Due to fear of public shaming and social stigma, she remained silent. In February 2026, the victim's marriage was finalised with a man from her own Hindu caste. However, this enraged the accused, who then increased and intensified the harassment. The accused, along with his associates Shani alias Sunny Abbas, Rizvi, and Raja alias Akhtar Ansari, began pressuring her to abandon Hinduism and convert to Islam. The group threatened to make her private videos viral on social media and circulated threats of distributing obscene letters within the Hindu community to damage her reputation and isolate her socially. When she refused to comply, Amir Zaidi and Raja alias Akhtar Ansari went to her prospective in-laws’ house and distributed obscene letters in the neighbourhood with the intent of defaming her and disrupting the marriage. Her future husband was intimidated by threats to his life, which created fear among his family and further destabilised the marriage arrangement. Subsequently, the victim approached the police and filed a complaint. The police registered a case under serious provisions of the IPC, detained the main accused, and initiated raids to locate the remaining accused. Ghatampur ACP Krishnakant Yadav confirmed that the accused was taken into custody for interrogation and that further legal proceedings were underway.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories under it are: Conversion of minor and Rape and sexual assault/harassment. 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 the 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 proselytisation, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here 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 primary category selected here is - Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Within it, the sub-category selected here is - Blackmail to convert. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is blackmailed to convert her religion, owing to her religious identity of being a Hindu. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim, however, there could be cases where the relationship is not consensual and the non-Hindu man starts blackmailing a Hindu woman to convert her religion. In these cases, it is often seen that the Hindu woman is blackmailed with intimate photos and/or videos, threats of harm to her or her family, threats of violence etc. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here is - Brainwashed and/or groomed, with the tertiary category being - Conversion of minor and 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 a hate crime. This case has been added to the tracker because a minor Hindu girl was lured into a relationship, subjected to sustained sexual exploitation, intimidation, and coercive pressure for religious conversion by the Muslim accused, Amir Zaidi. Firstly, it is important to note here that when the accused trapped the victim, she was just a minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Additionally, any supposed consent given for a relationship is already considered invalid under the POCSO Act. Such acts are not merely criminal in nature; they are ideologically charged, revealing religious prejudice and a calculated intent to alter the religious identity of a minor without her volition. The use of grooming, where trust is built only to exploit, is an insidious method that exploits the child’s naivety and dependence. Secondly, the accused groomed her, sexually exploited her and recorded obscene videos, which he later used to blackmail her for further sexual exploitation, and religious conversion. These exploitations were not random acts of crime; rather, they functioned as religiously motivated tools aimed at humiliating, and dominating a Hindu girl because of her faith, as he later blackmailed her for conversion. The target was not the victim as an individual, but her Hindu identity. The specific focus on her Hindu identity in the commission of these acts highlights the religious hatred underlying the crime, making it a religiously motivated offence. Thirdly, the accused attempted to force the victim to renounce her religion and convert to Islam. Pressuring a Hindu individual to discard her religious faith and embrace another was a direct attack on her religious identity and dignity. It was not a matter of personal choice; it was coercion rooted in hostility towards the victim's Hindu identity. Such an attempt reflects religious animosity because the act was not simply about personal differences but about erasing the victim’s Hindu faith, making it a religiously motivated crime. Fourth, in such cases, sexual violence and sustained harassment served a dual purpose: physical subjugation and religious humiliation. The continuous pattern of intimidation, blackmail, threats, and social harassment was intended to break the victim down emotionally, physically, and psychologically, thereby weakening her ability to resist coercive demands for religious conversion. This conduct was not random or impulsive; it was systematic, targeted, and sustained, rooted in hostility towards the victim’s Hindu identity. The subsequent demand for conversion further demonstrated that the abuse and harassment were directed not merely at controlling the victim as an individual but at undermining and erasing her Hindu religious identity. Fifth, the accused and his associates escalated the abuse beyond the victim herself by deliberately targeting her social standing and religious community. They threatened to make her private videos viral on social media and to distribute obscene letters to damage her reputation and isolate her. Even her future husband was intimidated by threats to his life, creating fear among his family. This pattern of intimidation demonstrated that the accused was never interested in a genuine or consensual relationship with a Hindu girl; rather, the relationship functioned solely as a means for sexual exploitation, control, and religious conversion. The targeted use of humiliation, threats, and defamation because of the victim’s Hindu identity constituted a hate crime, as the harm was inflicted not only on the individual but also on her religious identity and social belonging. Such actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. The pattern of grooming, sexual exploitation, harassment, intimidation, and enforced pressure for conversion demonstrated an intent to dominate and subjugate the victim because of her religious identity. Since such predatory actions stem from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith and its adherents, this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case has specified the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media, 3 February 2026.
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
Case sub-judice
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
