Hindu girl lured, blackmailed and sexually exploited by Muslim man, who pretended to be Hindu in Mehsana, Gujarat

Case ID : d3278ff | Location : Mehsana, Gujarat, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 21 February, 2026

Case ID : d3278ff

Mehsana, Gujarat, India

21 February, 2026

Hindu girl lured, blackmailed and sexually exploited by Muslim man, who pretended to be Hindu in Mehsana, Gujarat

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 the Kheralu town of Mehsana district, Gujarat, a Hindu girl was lured, blackmailed and sexually exploited by a Muslim man named Mohammad Javed Sidhi, who pretended to be a Hindu man. According to reports, the accused, Mohammad Javed Sidhi, befriended the Hindu girl from a rural background after introducing himself as a Hindu man named Rahul Patel. After establishing contact, he took photographs of the girl on his mobile phone. He later disclosed his real identity and used these photographs to blackmail her, threatening to circulate them on social media and defame her. Furthermore, the victim also stated that she had come to Kheralu for her studies when the accused persuaded her to accompany him to a guest house located in the GIDC area. Inside the premises, he engaged in sexual intercourse with her against her will. Following this, the girl informed her family members about the incident. Upon learning of the situation, the girl’s family members, accompanied by local villagers, reached the guest house and found the two together. An angry crowd gathered at the location and apprehended the accused. Based on the girl’s complaint, Kheralu police registered a case against Mohammad Javed under Sections 64(1) and 351(2) of the Indian Penal Code and initiated further legal proceedings.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been documented under the selected primary category: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the selected secondary category is: Man pretends to be Hindu. Under this, the selected tertiary category 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. Another selected secondary category is: Brainwashed and/or groomed. Under this, the selected tertiary category 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 are crimes, for 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 hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because a Hindu girl was Hindu girl was lured, blackmailed and sexually exploited by a Muslin man named Mohammad Javed Sidhi, who pretended to be a Hindu man. The Muslim man 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. This reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs. Furthermore, the accused also blackmailed her, threatening to defame her and sexually exploited. This was not a random act of sexual exploitation; it was a targeted assault driven by religious bias, aimed at singling out and violating a Hindu girl because of her religious identity. Such acts of exploitation by manipulation and religious profiling clearly underline the religiously motivated nature of this crime. The act of assuming a Hindu identity to access, manipulate, and ultimately violate a girl reflects a deeper disregard for Hindu religious identity and social norms, and cannot be reduced to a mere instance of personal misconduct. This is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of religiously motivated hate crimes targeting Hindu women. The Hinduphobia tracker has documented multiple cases where non-Hindu men pretended to be Hindu to befriend Hindu women for sexual exploitation or religious conversion. For example, in Bahadarabad, Haridwar district, Uttarakhand, a Hindu woman was blackmailed and raped by a Muslim man named Iqbal, who had faked a Hindu identity to entrap her. In a similar case, from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman was deceived and sexually exploited by a Muslim man named Sufian, who impersonated a Hindu man on social media to lure her. In another case in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu woman, mother of a six-year-old child, was deceived, forcibly converted to Islam, and kept in captivity. The perpetrator, Ehsan Hussain, pretended to be Hindu and trapped her in a fabricated love affair, coerced her into abandoning her faith, renamed her Khushboo Khatun, and forcibly married her before relocating her to Chennai. These incidents collectively highlight a pattern in which Hindu women are specifically targeted through deception for sexual exploitation and religious conversion, underscoring a systematic hostility towards Hindu individuals and their religious beliefs. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. 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 accused came into contact with the victim. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media, 22 February 2026.