Hindu minor subjected to sustained stalking, online harassment and pressure to convert by a Muslim man and his family in Maharashtra
Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra, India 
21 February, 2026
Case Summary
A 15-year-old Hindu minor from the Shirdi police station area, Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, was stalked, continuously harassed on Instagram, and subjected to sustained psychological pressure to convert her religion and marry a Muslim man named Irfan Sheikh. Irfan Sheikh's brother and sister-in-law also participated in the scheme, collectively pressuring the Hindu minor victim to abandon her faith and enter into a nikah (Islamic marriage ceremony). The Hindu minor victim’s identity was protected to safeguard her privacy, ensure her safety, and comply with legal standards that prohibit the disclosure of identifying details of minor victims. Irfan Sheikh, a Muslim man, first established contact with the Hindu minor victim through Instagram, where he began sending her continuous messages over several days with the intent of influencing and grooming her. Alongside his social media harassment, he also began physically stalking the Hindu minor victim, following her persistently. Through this combination of online messaging and physical stalking, he began applying sustained pressure on her to marry him. The contact and harassment continued over an extended period, during which the Hindu minor victim was subjected to repeated and relentless approaches from Irfan Sheikh. Investigation into the case revealed that Irfan Sheikh was not acting alone in his scheme. His brother and sister-in-law were active participants in the conspiracy against the Hindu minor victim. Together, the three perpetrators collectively applied sustained psychological pressure on the Hindu minor victim, demanding that she convert her religion and enter into a nikah with Irfan Sheikh. The involvement of Irfan Sheikh's family members in applying additional pressure on the Hindu minor victim indicated that the scheme was coordinated and premeditated rather than an isolated individual act. The continuous stalking, relentless Instagram harassment, and sustained psychological pressure from multiple perpetrators left the Hindu minor victim deeply distressed. Unable to bear the ordeal any longer, she gathered the courage to confide in her family and recount what she had been subjected to. Her family, recognising the seriousness of the situation, approached social organisations for support. With the help of these organisations, the family filed a formal complaint at the Shirdi police station. Police took immediate cognisance of the gravity of the matter and swiftly moved to arrest the main perpetrator. Following the formal complaint, police registered a case against Irfan Sheikh under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (the Indian criminal code) and the stringent provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act), given that the victim was a minor. The main perpetrator, Irfan Sheikh, was arrested and taken into custody. Following his arrest, police shifted their focus to the absconding co-perpetrators, namely Irfan Sheikh's brother and sister-in-law, who had fled. Raids were launched at multiple locations in search of the two. At the time of documenting this incident, the Police officials confirmed that the co-perpetrators would be apprehended shortly. Given the sensitivity of the case, the investigation was entrusted to a sub-inspector-level officer, with every aspect of the case being examined in detail. The incident caused widespread concern among parents in the Ahmednagar district regarding the safety of their children.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is "Predatory Proselytisation". The sub-category here is "Harassment, threats and 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. Another sub-category for this case is Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories here are "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 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 proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case qualified as a hate crime on the basis that a Muslim man named Irfan Sheikh, aided by his brother and sister-in-law, deliberately targeted a 15-year-old Hindu minor girl in Shirdi, Maharashtra. He used Instagram and physical stalking to groom her over an extended period with the specific intent of pressuring her into converting her religion and marrying him through a nikah. The victim was targeted specifically because she was a Hindu minor, and the entire scheme was directed at drawing her away from her Hindu faith and into a forced religious conversion. The registration of a case under both the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act confirmed the criminal and predatory nature of the perpetrators' conduct. The perpetrators' conduct in this case reflected a deliberate and calculated strategy of predatory proselytisation directed specifically at a vulnerable Hindu minor. Rather than engaging in open religious dialogue, Irfan Sheikh identified a 15-year-old Hindu girl as his target and used Instagram as a tool to initiate and maintain contact with her over an extended period. He combined this sustained online outreach with physical stalking, creating a situation of persistent and inescapable pressure for the Hindu minor victim. The coordinated involvement of his brother and sister-in-law in applying additional psychological pressure on the minor confirmed that this was not an impulsive act but a premeditated and organised scheme of predatory proselytisation directed at a Hindu child. The perpetrator's use of Instagram to continuously message the Hindu minor victim over an extended period, combined with his physical stalking of her, represented a textbook strategy of online and offline grooming. He used the accessibility and familiarity of social media to build a persistent presence in the victim's life, gradually normalising his contact and creating a sense of psychological pressure through sheer persistence. This sustained dual strategy of online messaging and physical stalking was designed to make the Hindu minor victim feel surrounded and overwhelmed, weakening her resistance to his demands for conversion and marriage. The subsequent involvement of the perpetrator's family in applying additional psychological pressure on the minor further deepened the grooming by creating the impression that the demand for conversion was coming from multiple directions simultaneously, amplifying the psychological impact on the young Hindu victim. The perpetrator's demand that the Hindu minor victim convert her religion and enter into a nikah with him constituted a direct and targeted attempt to draw a Hindu child away from her faith through harassment, threats, and coercion. He did not merely express romantic interest but made religious conversion an explicit condition of the relationship he was pursuing. His brother and sister-in-law reinforced this demand by applying their own sustained psychological pressure on the minor to convert and marry through nikah. The collective and coordinated nature of this pressure, involving three perpetrators working in concert to coerce a 15-year-old Hindu girl into religious conversion, underscored the deliberate and organised nature of the harassment and coercion directed at her Hindu identity. The victim in this case was a 15-year-old Hindu minor, a child who was particularly vulnerable to the kind of sustained psychological pressure and grooming that the perpetrators employed. The perpetrators' deliberate choice to target a minor Hindu girl for conversion and marriage reflected a calculated exploitation of her age and vulnerability. A 15-year-old child lacked the life experience and psychological resilience to effectively resist a sustained campaign of online and physical harassment backed by the collective pressure of multiple adult perpetrators. The registration of a case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act confirmed that the perpetrators' conduct toward the Hindu minor victim crossed into the territory of sexual offences against a child, adding a further dimension of criminality to an already serious hate crime directed at a Hindu minor. The victim's family's recognition of the grooming and their decision to approach social organisations and file a formal complaint reflected the serious impact this coordinated scheme had on the Hindu minor victim and her family. The family's involvement of social organisations before approaching the police suggested that they recognised the broader communal dimension of what had been done to their daughter and sought collective support in addressing it. Their identification of the perpetrators' conduct as grooming confirmed that the sustained and calculated nature of the harassment was apparent not only to the victim but to those closest to her. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia tracker.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 1
- Adult 0
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Case sub-judice
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
