Hindu minor girl from Barwani persuaded through Instagram by Muslim youth feigning Hindu identity

Case ID : d420f27 | Location : Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 11 March, 2026

Case ID : d420f27

Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India

11 March, 2026

Hindu minor girl from Barwani persuaded through Instagram by Muslim youth feigning Hindu identity

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Family claims grooming

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Case Summary

A Hindu minor girl from the Barwani district in Madhya Pradesh was deceived and taken away from her home after a Muslim youth, Faizan Khan, established contact with her through social media and concealed his identity to gain her trust. According to reports, the girl had been communicating with Khan on Instagram for some time before leaving her home without informing her family. After discovering her disappearance, the girl’s family began searching for her and later learned that she had travelled toward Indore, where the perpetrator had been in contact with her. She was eventually located and brought back to her family after several days of uncertainty. The girl from Barwani had been using Instagram, where she came into contact with Faizan Khan, who initially concealed his identity while communicating with her. Through repeated interaction on the social media platform, Khan built familiarity and trust with the minor. Over time, the youth persuaded her to leave her home and travel to meet him without informing her family. Acting under his influence, the girl left her residence and travelled away from her family. When the girl did not return home, her family became concerned and began searching for her. During their search, family members discovered that she had been communicating with Faizan Khan through Instagram and had left to meet him. She travelled from Barwani toward Indore, where the youth was present. After gathering information about her movements, her relatives travelled to Indore and eventually located the girl. Family members brought the girl back home after tracing her location. The incident caused severe distress to her family, who had been searching for her after she left home without notice. The sequence of events revealed that the minor had been in contact with Khan through social media before leaving her residence. After the girl was brought back to her family, the incident became known within the local community in the Barwani district. Family members informed others about how she had been contacted through Instagram and persuaded to leave her home by the youth. The circumstances surrounding the incident drew attention to the manner in which the girl had been influenced through online communication before travelling to meet the perpetrator. Further action by authorities has not been clearly documented in the available information, and details regarding police proceedings or investigations remained unclear at the time of documenting this incident.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Predatory Proselytisation". The sub-category for this case is "Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category here is "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. 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. The other category selected here is- Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. Under this, the subcategory selected 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. In this incident, the religious motive of the crime is evident from the fact that the Muslim perpetrator hid his true identity to trap the Hindu victim. 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 that reflects a deeper animosity towards Hindus and their beliefs, and this is why this case has been added here. Further, the circumstances of the case demonstrated predatory proselytisation directed at a Hindu minor girl in which a perpetrator developed familiarity and emotional influence over a young victim before persuading her to take actions that placed her under the perpetrator’s control. The deliberate targeting of a Hindu minor through social media platforms highlighted how such methods were used to manipulate vulnerable victims. The case further demonstrated proselytisation through grooming and manipulation. The Muslim youth maintained communication with the Hindu minor over a period of time, gradually strengthening the connection and encouraging her to leave her home and travel to meet him. Grooming involved a gradual process of building emotional influence, establishing dependence, and persuading the victim to act in ways that isolated her from her family and support network. In this instance, the girl eventually left her residence and travelled away from her family under the influence of the perpetrator, illustrating the culmination of this grooming process. The account provided by the family also indicated that the Minor girl was groomed and influenced by the perpetrator. The family’s discovery of the interaction underscored the vulnerability of minors who can be influenced through prolonged online communication without the immediate awareness of their guardians. The fact that the girl left her home to meet the youth demonstrated the significant degree of influence that had been established through the grooming process. Notably, in this case, the Hindu victim was a minor, which means that 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. Since the religious motive of the crime is evident from the facts of the case, it has been documented in the hate tracker. Disclaimer: The exact date on which the Hindu minor girl left her home and travelled to meet the Muslim perpetrator is not specified in the available sources. The report describing the incident was published on 12 March 2026. In the absence of a clearly confirmed incident date, 12 March 2026 has been recorded as the indicative incident date for the purposes of documentation in the Hinduphobia Tracker. This date reflects when the case entered the public domain through media reporting and is used for record-keeping purposes only.