Hindu girl blackmailed with obscene photos and forced to do Nikah by Muslim man
Pauri, Uttarakhand, India 
5 November, 2024
Case Summary
A Hindu woman in Pauri, Uttarakhand, was trapped in a relationship by a Muslim man named Shahbaz Mirza, who later threatened to spread her obscene pictures on social media if she refused to do Nikah with him. Shahbaz, a barber in Paithani, lured the 18-year-old Hindu girl into his trap through social media. When her family discovered the situation, they lodged a complaint with the police. On learning this, Shahbaz fled Paithani but was soon arrested. A formal case was registered against him under crime number 11/24, invoking sections 140(3) and 77 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with section 67A of the IT Act.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category in this case is: Crimes against women in relationships and other sexual crimes. The first subcategory under this is: Forced conversion before marriage. The tertiary category under this: Forced to do Nikah. 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. In such cases, typically, two patterns emerge. First, when the relationship is 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. The second is when the woman gets into a marriage with the man pretending to share her faith. Later, when the truth is revealed, the man starts pressuring the woman to convert her religion and give up her religious identity. In both the situations, 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 pressurising the victim to do ‘Nikah’, 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. Another subcategory under this category is: Blackmailed to convert. 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. This case is recorded as a hate crime because the victim was deliberately targeted for being a Hindu woman, and the abuse she faced was bound to her religious identity. The relationship created by Shahbaz Mirza was not simply an instance of coercion but one with a specific religious aim. His threats to expose her intimate pictures were a means to compel her into marriage under Islamic law, that is, Nikah. Since Nikah cannot be performed unless the woman first converts to Islam, the underlying pressure was directed at forcing her to abandon her Hindu faith. The essence of the crime lies in this religious compulsion. The blackmail was not just about controlling her choices but about pushing her into a framework where her Hindu identity would no longer exist. By trapping her and then threatening her reputation to enforce compliance, the perpetrator attempted to manipulate her into surrendering both her dignity as a woman and her cultural identity as a Hindu. Such actions fit within the wider pattern of Hinduphobia because the girl was not only exploited as an individual but specifically as someone belonging to the Hindu faith. The demand for Nikah, which presupposes conversion, reveals that the ultimate objective was to erase her Hindu selfhood and to bind her within another religious identity against her will. This is why the case is categorised as a religiously motivated hate crime, targeting her precisely because she was Hindu. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date on which the incident happened. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media.
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
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
