Minor Hindu girl lured and threatened by Muslim man posing as Hindu in Sabarkantha, Gujarat

Case ID : d3276c8 | Location : Sabar Kantha, Gujarat, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 9 December, 2025

Case ID : d3276c8

Sabar Kantha, Gujarat, India

9 December, 2025

Minor Hindu girl lured and threatened by Muslim man posing as Hindu in Sabarkantha, Gujarat

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Case Summary

In the Himatnagar area of Sabarkantha district, Gujarat, a minor Hindu girl was lured and threatened with abduction by a Muslim man named Mohammad Shakir Sarkar Mohammed Sheikh, who pretended to be Hindu. According to reports, a Hindu family had visited a Kalyan Jewellers outlet in the Motipura area for shopping, during which their personal information, including names, address, mobile numbers and email IDs, was collected under the pretext of customer feedback. This information was accessed by the Muslim accused, identified as Mohammad Shakir Sarkar Mohammed Sheikh, who then pretended to be a Hindu man named Ajay and developed a friendship with the Hindu family's minor daughter. The accused lured her into a relationship, after which they began going out to restaurants. During this time, the accused also took photos of her. In December 2025, the accused began forcing the minor victim to flee with him to Ajmer, Rajasthan, and also pressured her to steal gold and silver jewellery from her house. During this time, the victim came to know about the accused's real identity and that he was a Muslim, due to which she broke off the relationship. However, the accused became enraged and began calling her from different numbers and threatened to abduct her. Fed up with the ordeal, the victim told her parents the whole story, and they filed a complaint with the police on 6 February 2026. The family also revealed that the accused threatened to defame the victim by making her photos and videos viral and demanded a ransom of Rs. 5 lakh. Based on the complaint, the police registered an FIR and arrested the accused, Mohammad Shakir Sarkar Mohammed Sheikh, and his accomplice, Mohammad Sohail Makrani.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the category- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the subcategory selected is- Man pretends to be Hindu, and the tertiary category selected 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 malicious 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. This case was added to the tracker because the accused had deliberately concealed his religious identity and presented himself to the minor Hindu victim as a Hindu man named Ajay to gain her trust and initiate a relationship. The use of a false Hindu identity was not incidental; it was the very means through which access to the victim was secured. Such deception, followed by sustained contact and emotional manipulation, established that the relationship had been initiated through misrepresentation aimed at targeting the victim as a Hindu minor. In this case, the accused deliberately concealed his religious identity to initiate and sustain a relationship with a Hindu girl. This itself 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 that reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. It is further important to note here that the victim was 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 consenting to a relationship, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. Furthermore, any supposed consent given in such cases is considered void under the POCSO Act. The religious dimension became even more pronounced once the victim discovered the accused’s real identity and attempted to end the relationship. Instead of withdrawing, the accused escalated the pressure by threatening abduction, demanding that she flee with him to Ajmer, and pressuring her to remove gold and silver jewellery from her home. The subsequent threats to circulate her photographs and videos, showed that the deception had evolved into blackmail and coercive victimisation. The use of such threats after the exposure of his concealed identity strengthened the conclusion that the victim had been deliberately entrapped and then pressured through fear and social stigma. Given that the victim was a Hindu minor, the case was documented as a hate crime with a distinct religious angle. The targeting of a Hindu girl through a fabricated Hindu identity, followed by intimidation and blackmail once the truth emerged, demonstrated that the offence was not merely interpersonal in nature but was directly linked to her religious identity and vulnerability as a minor. 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 started came into contact with the accused in December 2025. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date, 10 December 2025, as a placeholder to represent the beginning of her suffering. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 10 February 2026, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began, not when it was reported.