Minor Hindu girl abducted by her Muslim neighbour; accused threatened to convert her and perform nikah

Case ID : d32776c | Location : Darbhanga, Bihar, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 27 January, 2026

Case ID : d32776c

Darbhanga, Bihar, India

27 January, 2026

Minor Hindu girl abducted by her Muslim neighbour; accused threatened to convert her and perform nikah

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Family claims grooming

Hate speech against Hindus

Violent threats

Case Summary

In Darbhanga, Bihar, a 17-year-old Hindu girl went missing after being abducted by her Muslim neighbour, Mohammad Sitara. The victim's father revealed that Mohammad Sitara threatened to convert his daughter to Islam and would perform nikah with her. The incident occurred on 28 January 2026, when the victim’s Hindu family had gone to a hospital to attend to a relative, who was injured in a road accident. At around 5 pm, the minor victim went to a nearby grocery store located next to their house. When the Hindu family returned two hours later, the victim was missing. When the family inquired, a local shopkeeper confirmed that she had visited the shop but could not say where she went afterwards. The Hindu family searched extensively for her from 28 January to 4 February before learning from a villager that the accused, Mohammad Sitara, had taken her away on his motorbike. When the family went to his house, he was not there. However, the accused's parents and relatives were present, who pushed them away, when the victim's family demanded the girl’s return. Subsequently, the victim's father filed a complaint at the Kamtoul police station on 5 February 2026, after which an FIR was registered. The background to this incident is rooted in prior hostility between the families. On 4 September 2025, Mohammad Sitara entered the victim’s home armed with a weapon and committed robbery. He was apprehended by villagers and handed over to the police, following which he was sent to jail. After his release four months later, he threatened the Hindu family, saying he would take revenge for sending him to prison and would kidnap their daughters and daughters-in-law. He also threatened them that he would kidnap their daughter, perform nikah with her and forcibly convert her religion, stating that there were “1000 of us (Muslims) in the village” while the Hindu families were only four in number and could do nothing. He also stated that converting their daughter’s religion to Islam would bring him glory and heaven. The victim’s grandfather stated that before going to jail, Sitara had warned them to withdraw the case or he would abduct the victim. After his release, the threats persisted. When the Hindu family again went to Sitara’s house following the abduction, his father, Jamahir Nadaf and Shakeela Khatoon, along with others, told them they would not return the girl and said they could do whatever they wished. As per the police, the accused and his family had fled their residence after the case was registered. Sitara, who was already married and the father of two children, switched off his mobile phone, making his location untraceable. Police conducted continuous raids at possible hideouts and obtained a court warrant for his arrest, stating that efforts were underway to rescue the minor girl.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Predatory Proselytisation. The sub-category selected 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 other sub-category selected here is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category selected is- Conversion of minor and Family claims grooming. 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 second primary category selected is - Hate speech against Hindus. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Violent threats. Violent threats, explicit, implicit or implied, is the most dangerous form of hate speech since it goes beyond discriminatory and prejudicial language to express the intent of causing harm to an individual or a group of people based on their religious identity and faith. There could be several different kinds of threats that are issued to Hindus based on religious animosity. An explicit threat would mean the direct threat of violence towards an individual Hindu, a group of Hindus or Hindus at large. Physical violence, death threats, threats of destruction of property belonging to Hindus and threats of genocide would mean explicit threats against Hindus for their religious identity. Implicit threats may not be a direct threat but implied through the use of symbols of actions – for example – in the Nupur Sharma case, other than explicit threats, there were also implicit threats when Islamists took to the streets to burn and beat her effigies. It implies that they want to do the same to Nupur Sharma – thereby is considered an implicit threat. Violent threats can be delivered in person, through letters, phone calls, graffiti, or increasingly through social media and other online platforms. It would be important to understand that a threat – explicit or implicit, online or offline – to an individual who happens to be a Hindu does not qualify as a religiously motivated threat. Such a threat, while vile and dangerous, could be owing to non-religious reasons and/or personal animosity. To qualify as a religiously motivated threat, it would need to exhibit an indication that the individual is being targeted for religious reasons and/or owing to his/her religious identity as a Hindu. This case qualifies as a hate crime because the minor Hindu girl was specifically targeted on the basis of her religious identity, with the clear intention of abducting her, marrying her through nikah, and converting her to Islam. The threats issued by the accused prior to the abduction were explicitly religious in nature, leaving no ambiguity about the motive. He openly declared that he would convert the girl’s religion and that doing so would bring him “glory and heaven”, thereby framing the act not as a personal relationship but as a religiously motivated objective. Firstly, it is 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 converting to another religion, and the Muslim perpetrator purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victim. This meant that any proposed nikah or conversion would have been inherently coercive. The accused, who was already married and significantly older, exploited the vulnerability of a minor girl who was left alone at home. The deliberate targeting of a minor underscored the predatory nature of the act and demonstrated that the intent was not companionship but control, subjugation, and religious conversion. Secondly, the accused’s prior threats revealed deep-seated religious hostility. He reportedly told the family that there were “1000 of us” in the village while the Hindu families were only four, thereby threatening them through demographic intimidation. This statement reflected a communal power dynamic where minority Hindu families were portrayed as helpless and were susceptible to being abused by the Muslim perpetrators. The threat to kidnap the daughter, perform nikah, and convert her religion if the family did not comply amounted to religious coercion backed by intimidation. The emphasis on religious conversion as an act that would earn spiritual reward further reinforced that the motive extended beyond personal grievance and entered the realm of faith-based supremacy. Thirdly, the abduction itself escalated the matter from threats to action. Abducting a minor Hindu girl from her home and separating her from her family in order to force nikah and religious conversion constituted a direct assault on her religious autonomy and her family’s right to practise and preserve their faith. It was not an isolated criminal act but one intertwined with explicit religious intent. The act sought to erase her Hindu identity through enforced marital and religious transformation. Fourth, the case is further aggravated by the explicitly religious and violent nature of the threats issued by the accused prior to the abduction. The accused did not merely threaten kidnapping but repeatedly warned that he would forcibly take the girl, convert her to Islam, and perform nikah against her will. These threats were accompanied by intimidation rooted in religious identity, including claims about Muslim dominance and the inability of the Hindu family to resist. Such statements were not casual or ambiguous; they combined the threat of physical harm with a declared intention to alter the victim’s religious identity through coercion. The fusion of violence, abduction, and forced religious conversion within these threats underscores that the act was premeditated and ideologically framed, rather than a spontaneous or purely personal dispute. Additionally, when the victim’s family approached the accused’s house, they were pushed away and told they could do whatever they wished. This response, coupled with earlier threats of revenge for sending him to jail, reflected a pattern of intimidation. The earlier robbery case and subsequent threats demonstrated that the abduction was also used as a means of asserting dominance over a Hindu family that had previously sought legal accountability. The religious conversion angle added an ideological dimension to this retaliation. 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. Such acts were not merely personal crimes; they were rooted in a desire to dominate and erase the religious identity of the victim. Taken together, the explicit threats of conversion, the invocation of religious reward, demographic intimidation, the targeting of a minor Hindu girl, and the act of abduction collectively establish a clear religious motive. The crime was not merely one of kidnapping but one that aimed to forcibly alter the victim’s religious identity through coercion and nikah. 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. The earliest date mentioned is 4 September 2025, when the accused committed the robbery at the victim's home. Therefore, we have considered the date of the incident as 4 September 2025, though the media reported the incident on a later date.