Two Muslim youths from Kanpur befriend minor Hindu girl on Instagram, kidnap and rape her, then convert her to Islam
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
4 July, 2023
Case Summary
On July 5, 2023, Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur police arrested two youths named Lucky Khan and Suhaib Khan at the Sarita Palace Hotel for kidnapping, blackmailing and raping a minor Hindu girl, and later forcing her to convert to Islam. Residents of the Nawabad locality in Jhansi had befriended the Hindu victim on Instagram a few months prior. While chatting, Lucky Khan managed to procure the victim’s photos, which he morphed and started using to blackmail her. The accused duo reached Kanpur, booked a room in the Sarita Palace Hotel and then went to Shivrajpur village, where the girl stayed. They urged her to meet them, threatening to make her photos viral on social media if she refused. When the girl came, they forcefully made her sit in a car and took her to the hotel. There they took turns to rape her and forced her to convert to Islam. On the victim’s complaint, an FIR was registered, and the accused were produced in court, and sent to jail.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
In this case, there are several distinct components which proves that the offence was committed coupled with a bias hence this case has been classified as a religious hate crime. The sub-category in this instance is that the Hindu 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. The other sub-category under which this is a religiously motivated hate crime is grooming. 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 is a crime, for the purpose of 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 a hate crime. In this case, the victim was a minor. She was first blackmailed and raped, and then, was forcibly converted to Islam. It is evident from the facts of the case that the victim was specifically targeted owing to her religious identity and then blackmailed, raped and forced to convert to Islam. Since this case has components of a religiously motivated hate crime, it is being documented in the hate crime database.
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
male
Sources 
