Muslim youth pretends to be Hindu and lures a minor Hindu girl, rapes and records video, accused's mother forces minor to convert to Islam
Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India 
20 December, 2020
Case Summary
Agra Police arrested one Sahil Khan for pretending to be a Hindu named Divyanshu Agarwal on Instagram to trap a rich 17-year-old Hindu girl. Khan reportedly worked in a car garage and befriended the victim student by posting fashionable images on Instagram. He cultivated a relationship with the victim, the daughter of a Hindu businessman. The girl fell in love with the accused. They met several times. On December 21, 2020, the accused called the minor to a hotel and forced her to have alcohol. After the girl fell unconscious, he raped her in the hotel room and also shot private videos which he later used to blackmail her. Sahil then kept sexually assaulting the victim girl for three years. He threatened to make the videos viral if she failed to fulfil his demands. He looted the girl for Rs 10 lakh and also asked her to get all the gold jewellery kept at her house. In the interim, the girl learnt about the real identity of Khan. It was also reported that the accused had given the looted jewellery to his mother. He also introduced her to the girl. It is said that the mother of the accused tried to convert the girl to Islam. The accused used several tactics to impress the girl. He posed as Divyanshu Agarwal, posted impressive photographs on Instagram, and also posed with several local politicians. The incident came to the fore after the businessman found cash and jewellery missing from his home, after which the girl confessed that she had been trapped, raped and blackmailed by a Muslim man. The father of the victim sought help from Bajrang Dal workers who helped the family register a police complaint. The police arrested Sahil and booked his mother, Ruksana.
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 ensure that the victim. The accused's mother threatened the Hindu victim to convert to Islam after the truth was revealed. There is further an element of grooming involved in the case since the victim was a minor. 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. The facts point towards the fact that the Muslim perpetrator targeted the victim specifically owing to her religious identity and after that, tried to forcefully change her religious identity to Islam pointing towards a crime with his motivations being driven by religious hate, hence it has been documented as a hate crime.
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
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
both
Sources 
