Minor Hindu girl driven to suicide after being deceived and coerced for marriage by Muslim man posing as Hindu

Case ID : d3278c8 | Location : Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 11 February, 2026

Case ID : d3278c8

Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India

11 February, 2026

Minor Hindu girl driven to suicide after being deceived and coerced for marriage by Muslim man posing as Hindu

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Case Summary

In the Jamaldah area under the Mekhliganj Police Station in Cooch Behar district, West Bengal, a 15-year-old Hindu girl named Shefali Barman was driven to suicide following sustained deception, blackmail and threats by a Muslim man identified as Humayun Kabir Miyan, who was posing as a Hindu. According to media reports, Shefali Barman was a student of Jamaldah Tulsi Devi High School. She had appeared for the Madhyamik Examination, marking an important stage in her academic life. According to family sources, she had been in a relationship with a Muslim man identified as Humayun Kabir Miyan. It was stated that the Muslim perpetrator initially concealed his identity, posed as Hindu and developed a relationship with the minor Hindu girl. According to her family, when Shefali discovered his real identity, she decided to end the relationship. After the breakup, the Muslim perpetrator began repeatedly threatening her. Family members stated that he pressured the Hindu minor to elope and marry him. They further stated that he warned her of serious consequences, including threats to her life, if she refused to comply. The family described the pressure as continuous intimidation and psychological harassment. Unable to cope with what her relatives described as sustained blackmail, threats, and psychological pressure, the 15-year-old Hindu student died by suicide on 12 February 2026. Her death occurred in the Jamaldah area under the jurisdiction of Mekhliganj Police Station. Following her death, Shefali’s mother filed a formal complaint at Mekhliganj Police Station. Police confirmed that a case had been registered and that an investigation was underway. Officials were expected to examine phone records, digital communications, and statements from family members and acquaintances as part of the investigation. Police arrested the Muslim perpetrator, Humayun Kabir Miyan. Authorities urged the public not to spread unverified information and stated that legal action would proceed based on the evidence collected. Further investigation was ongoing.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category here is "Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes". The sub-category here is "Man pretends to be Hindu". 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. This case qualified as a hate crime because a minor Hindu girl endured sustained blackmail, threats, and psychological pressure from the Muslim perpetrator, who posed as a Hindu. This harrowing sequence of events drove her to tragic suicide, an act she committed under relentless coercion and blackmail for marriage by the accused. Firstly, it is important to state that the victim was a minor. This meant the element of consent and genuine choice was absent from the outset. Minors, with their tender age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion; they simply cannot fully grasp the profound implications of entering a relationship across faiths or the crushing pressures that would follow. The Muslim perpetrator deliberately targeted and exploited this heartbreaking vulnerability in the young victim. Since this case exemplified the ruthless use of deception, blackmail, and threats to torment a Hindu minor, it constituted a blatant act of a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus. Secondly, the Muslim perpetrator's act of deception by posing as a Hindu demonstrated clear bias and malicious intent towards the victim’s religion. By hiding his true identity, the Muslim man manipulated the minor Hindu girl’s innocent trust and targeted her under false pretences, revealing a premeditated effort to exploit her precisely because of her religious background. This represented a direct violation of her right to informed consent in personal relationships, alongside a grave infringement on her religious beliefs and cultural norms. Thus, the perpetrator’s deliberate decision to conceal his religious identity strongly underscored the religious motive behind this crime. In such instances, identity concealment was not merely a deceptive tactic for personal gain but a calculated strategy rooted in religious profiling and targeting. The accused knew full well that the victim, as a Hindu minor, would refuse his advances if she learned his real identity, so he circumvented this by lying, a move that directly exposed his religiously driven intent. This deception reflected a larger, deeply troubling pattern where Hindu girls are specifically singled out using false identities by Muslim men, often with coercion, elopement, or conversion in mind. Such targeted victimisation based on religion demonstrated not just a fundamental disregard for Hinduism but exposed a profound animosity towards Hindus and their cherished beliefs. Following all this, the extreme coercion, harassment, and blackmail that the victim faced for forced marriage and elopement at the hands of the Muslim perpetrator culminated in her tragic suicide, which laid bare the intolerable pressure she endured specifically due to her Hindu identity. A minor Hindu girl subjected to such severe harassment, blackmail, and coercion for marriage highlighted the venomous depth of hostility and ruthless severity with which the perpetrator aimed to target and shatter her life, turning personal pursuit into a sustained assault on her faith. This merciless campaign offered her no escape, driving this innocent girl to take her own life and thereby underscoring the sheer gravity of the religiously motivated persecution she suffered. Since this case met several parameters of a hate-driven crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a crime occurred or when a victim’s ordeal began, rather than when the media reported it. In this case, the report did not specify when her ordeal began. It only specified the date on which the Hindu minor girl died by suicide, which was 12 February 2026. Therefore, this date is recorded as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes.