Minor Hindu girl abducted and murdered after gang-rape, Shadab, Farooq, Shafi Raza, Latif, Lucky Miyan booked, hurled caste abuse at family
Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, India 
12 August, 2023
Case Summary
A minor girl from the Dalit community was murdered after she was allegedly gang-raped in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district. Following the incident, the victim’s family held 5 men responsible for this heinous crime. Subsequently, on the basis of the family’s complaint, the Police filed a case against all five accused. The accused were identified as Shadab, Farooq, Shafi Raza, Latif, and Lucky Miyan. The incident took place in the Piswa police station area in the Sitapur district. As per the complaint given by the victim’s family, the incident took place on 12 August. As per the father of the deceased girl, at around 11:30 in the night, his 12-year-old daughter had come out of the house to go to the bathroom. She was then held captive by two accused namely Shadab and Farooq and another accused named Shafi Raza held a gun to her head. They had warned the victim that if she screamed they would kill her. Afterwards, they allegedly abducted the victim. It is also being claimed that the girl was in a relationship with Shadab, and it was he who had lured her out of the house under some pretext, after which he and his friends gang-raped and killed her. Sharing the ordeal, the victim’s family stated that the accused hurled casteist slurs at them and bolstered that they can do nothing against them. The victim’s father narrated that the accused said that they raped their daughter and sister and then killed her. They further threatened that they will rape and kill his wife along with their son. According to the victim’s father, all the accused are henchmen of Lucky Miyan, a district Panchayat representative. In the complaint, the victim’s family has also written that they have been intimidated by the accused. The police did say that the case appeared to one of murder, however, the police ruled out the claims that the girl was raped, stating that prima facie the report didn’t find evidence of rape.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
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. In this case, there are several layers that one would have to unpack. First and foremost, the Hindu victim was a minor and therefore, she has no agency for giving consent - even if one is to believe the speculation that the victim was in a "relationship" with the Muslim accused. Secondly, from the available information, it appears like there were eyewitnesses who saw the child being abducted at gunpoint. If that is true, it would punch a hole in the speculation that the child was in a "relationship" with the accused. However, what makes this a fit case for a religiously motivated hate crime is that the family of the victim categorically stated that the Muslim accused hurled caste based abuses at the family. When caste based abuses and slurs are hurled by non-Hindus, it is generally a euphemism for their religious identity and not their caste identity. The animosity displayed by the accused would be no less had the victims belonged to a different caste. And therefore, when a caste abuse is hurled by a non-Hindu, it is religious animosity that drives the abuse and not the caste identity. Since the victim's family testified that the Muslim accused hurled caste abuses, it is a logical extension to believe that the accused, if guilty, held religious animosity towards the religious identity of the victim as well. Given the testimony of the family as reported in the media, this case is being categorised as a case of religiously motivated hate crime under the grooming sub-category as rape and assault owing to religious animosity.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 0
- Female 1
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 1
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 0
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
Sources 
