Hindu woman befriended, lured, and raped by Muslim man posing as Hindu in Muzaffarpur, Bihar

Case ID : d327899 | Location : Nadia district, West Bengal, India | Date of Incident : Thu, 19 February, 2026

Case ID : d327899

Nadia district, West Bengal, India

19 February, 2026

Hindu woman befriended, lured, and raped by Muslim man posing as Hindu in Muzaffarpur, Bihar

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Brainwashed and/or groomed

Rape and sexual assault/harassment

Case Summary

In Muzaffarpur, Bihar, a married Hindu woman from Nadia, West Bengal, was raped by a Muslim man identified as Shahbaz, who introduced himself to her as a Hindu named Sameer Raj. He established contact with her through social media and later met her in person. During the meeting, he sexually assaulted her after she was found unconscious. The Hindu woman later discovered that the man who had assaulted her had misrepresented his identity. The incident resulted in physical and psychological harm to the Hindu victim, who had travelled from West Bengal. All this began when the victim woman from Nadia district in West Bengal connected with the Muslim accused on Facebook. The woman was married and had an eight-year-old son. She was lured into a consensual friendship by the accused man, who was posing as Sameer Raj on social media. In mid-February 2026, the woman travelled from West Bengal to Muzaffarpur by train, bringing her son with her, after arranging to meet Shahbaz. Upon arriving, she contacted him and asked him to come to the railway station. Instead of taking her directly home, the man kept her and her son in his vehicle and drove around the city. At one point, he left her son with his driver but continued to accompany the woman. The woman later learned that “Sameer Raj” was not his real name; his driver informed her that his real name was Shahbaz and that he was married. According to the woman’s account to the police, after the revelation about his identity, Shahbaz took her to a room in Muzaffarpur and raped her. Afterwards, he returned them to the car, where she grew increasingly exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, eventually losing consciousness. Before she lost consciousness, she says Shahbaz demanded money from her husband and coerced her into arranging a Unified Payments Interface transfer of ₹10,000, which she did. When she regained consciousness, the woman and her child were found in or near a private hospital in Muzaffarpur, and she was subsequently admitted to Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital for care and evaluation. Once she was lucid, she provided her statement to the local police, outlining the sequence of events and the sexual assault. On 20 February 2026, Muzaffarpur police acted on her statement and arrested Shahbaz. Law enforcement authorities confirmed that they had detained the accused and placed him in judicial custody as part of the ongoing criminal investigation.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category for this case is "Man pretends to be Hindu". The tertiary category should be "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 malafide 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. Another sub-category this case qualifies for is "Brainwashed and/or groomed". The tertiary category under this is "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 is being added to the tracker as a Hindu woman from West Bengal was deliberately targeted through religious deception and sexual violence by a Muslim man posing as a Hindu. The accused’s act of posing as a Hindu man named Sameer Raj and deceiving the married Hindu woman from Nadia district, West Bengal, into travelling from West Bengal to Muzaffarpur displayed calculated intent and religious hostility. He knowingly concealed his Muslim identity as Shahbaz, understanding that the victim would have rejected his advances had she known the truth. This deception was a methodical attempt to target a Hindu woman based solely on her faith. By misrepresenting himself on social media, the perpetrator violated the victim’s trust, autonomy and her right to make informed choices about relationships in accordance with her beliefs. His identity concealment mirrored a wider pattern in which Hindu women are deliberately singled out through deception and coercion for exploitation by Muslim men. The offender’s conduct exposed deep-rooted animosity towards Hindus and their faith, affirming this as a religiously motivated hate crime directed at the Hindu victim and her community. The subsequent sexual exploitation and extortion further reflected the perpetrator’s ingrained hostility towards the victim’s religious identity. Sexual violence in such contexts often served as a tool of domination and humiliation, not simply as a pursuit of physical desire. The false presentation of a Hindu identity to gain proximity and trust before raping her in a room, extorting ₹10,000 via Unified Payments Interface from her husband, and abandoning her unconscious with her child revealed that his actions were driven by religious prejudice and hatred rather than personal impulse. This form of deception, assault, and coercion was a targeted attempt to degrade the victim’s dignity and faith, aligning with established indicators of religiously motivated crimes. Given that this case meets the parameters of a hate crime, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records dates of incidents based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported by the media. However, in this case, media reports did not state the exact date when the victim's ordeal began. They only stated that she travelled from West Bengal to Muzaffarpur in mid-February 2026. The only other date mentioned was 20 February 2026, when Muzaffarpur police acted on her complaint. As such, since the exact date of the beginning of her ordeal was not specified, 20 February 2026 was recorded as an indicative incident date for documentation purposes only. Since the victim was from Nadia district and was targeted via social media while in Nadia, West Bengal, the location of the incident is recorded as Nadia, West Bengal, for documentation purposes.