Muslim man conceals his religious identity and pretends to be a Hindu to lure Hindu woman

Case ID : ea7ab03 | Location : Surat, Gujarat, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 9 July, 2023

Case ID : ea7ab03

Surat, Gujarat, India

9 July, 2023

Muslim man conceals his religious identity and pretends to be a Hindu to lure Hindu woman

Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes

Man pretends to be Hindu

Name Changed

Case Summary

In Gujarat's Surat, a Muslim man named Ozair Alam lured a Hindu girl by posing as a Hindu named Arjun Singh. He also created a fake Aadhaar Card and conducted his business using the same name. He ran a shop called ‘Ruhi Fashion’ in Awadh Market in the Puna area of the city and tricked the female who was employed there. He took her to Saputara and established sexual relations. She eventually came to know the truth. When the workers of a Hindu organisation came to know about this, they reached the perpetrator’s shop. They found two Aadhaar cards, by the names of Arjun Singh and Ozair Alam. His address was registered as Champaran, Bihar in the card with his actual Muslim name. Activists of Vishwa Hindu Parishad apprehended and handed him over to the police.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

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. What gives this case a distinct religious angle is that the Muslim perpetrator actively hid his religion and pretended to be a Hindu to ensnare the Hindu woman. Since the religious motive of the crime is evident from the fact that the man pretended to be a Hindu to trap a Hindu woman, this case has been documented as a hate crime.