Muslim youth pressures Hindu girl into a relationship; blackmails her, rapes and converts her to Islam
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 
15 February, 2022
Case Summary
In Mira Bhayandar, Mumbai, a 22-year-old girl filed a police complaint against Amin Azam Sheikh and his family members at the Naya Nagar police station. She accused them of physical harm and mental harassment, alleging that they threatened to make intimate videos viral if she did not convert to Islam. The victim met a boy named Shahbaz in 2022. He would frequently come to visit the victim's computer coaching center. Shahbaz introduced her to Amin Sheikh. Amin pressured her into a romantic relationship, threatening suicide with a knife if she refused. He coerced her into physical intimacy, introduced her to his family, and took her to a Qazi to convert her to Islam. She was renamed Rahima, taken to Hazrat Baleshah Syed Dargah of Uttan and a talisman was tied on her hand. Amin's mother disapproved, revealing he was married and the girl whom he had introduced as his brother’s daughter was his own daughter. The victim was allegedly kept hostage in Amin's house and rescued by the police once. The police arrested Amin, his mother, and others, charging them under various sections of the Indian Penal Code. An investigation is ongoing.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
In this case, there are two distinct components which prove that the offence was committed coupled with a bias against the Hindu faith. The first factor is that the accused forced the victim to convert to Islam before marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu man is in a relationship with a Hindu woman when the pressure to convert her religion begins to manifest. The relationship in such cases is mostly consensual and the religious identity of the perpetrator is known to the Hindu woman in the relationship, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu man starts to force the victim to convert her religion and give up her Hindu religious identity. In such cases, the methods used to force the victim to convert her religion often revolve around force-feeding beef, forcing her to wear hijab, forcing her to read the Kalma or even pressurizing the victim to do ‘Niqah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where a Hindu woman consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. The second component in this case which makes it worthy of being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime is that the victim was blackmailed to convert to Islam. When Hindu women are in a relationship with non-Hindu men, there are cases where the woman is blackmailed to convert her religion, owing to her religious identity of being a Hindu. Such relationships may be consensual with the religious identity of the non-Hindu man known to the victim, however, there could be cases where the relationship is not consensual and the non-Hindu man starts blackmailing a Hindu woman to convert her religion. In these cases, it is often seen that the Hindu woman is blackmailed with intimate photos and/or videos, threats of harm to her or her family, threats of violence etc. Such cases are driven by specific religious motivations and against the religious identity of the victim and are therefore qualified as hate crimes.
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 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 5 to 10
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
