The Uttar Pradesh police have been in a lookout for a Muslim youth named Aalam Ansari after he allegedly went missing with a minor girl on January 2. According to a report by the Hindi daily Jagran, the Uttar Pradesh police have informed that Ansari had made a fake Instagram account under a Hindu name, Anumol Misra, to implicate the minor into a love trap and then ran away with her.
Interestingly, the fake account of ‘Anumol Misra’, who was actually Aalam Ansari, had ‘I love Indian Army’ written in the bio to make the page look more authentic.
The police said that Aalam Ansari, a resident of Shohratgarh town in Siddharthnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, befriended young girls on social media. He spent hours chatting with this minor girl on Instagram posing as Anumol Misra. After she got entrapped, the youth took her and fled. The police are now on the lookout for the duo.
The incident came to the fore when the minor girl did not return home until late evening on January 2. The kins of the minor girl approached the police with a missing complaint. Based on the complaint, the UP police registered a case against Ansari and started investigating the case.
The Uttar Pradesh police have constituted a team of two police officers to search for the duo. A surveillance team has been deployed to search for the duo based on their mobile locations. However, the police have until now been unsuccessful in tracing the duo.
On January 3, the surveillance team traced their location to be near Radhakrishna temple in Balrampur. Immediately a team led by SI Hari Narayan Dixit left for the location. But when they reached there, the accused along with the minor victim had already fled. The police were of the opinion that Ansari might have been cautioned by someone, because of which he fled the premises before the police could nab him.
The display picture on Anumol Misra’s Instagram account was that of Aalam Ansari.
The police came to know that Aalam Ansari had charmed the minor girl, through his Instagram account, under the pretext of being a Hindu. Actually, the display picture on the Instagram account of Anumol Misra is that of Aalam Ansari. This is how the police initially concluded that this Anumol Misra is indeed Aalam Ansari.
Now, the police are also scanning through his social media profiles and contacts to find out what led Ansari to create a social media account under a fake name.
Grooming Jihad- an extremely deep-seated phenomenon gaining a foothold in India, especially Uttar Pradesh
This is, however, not the only case in which a Muslim faked his identity as a Hindu to lure innocent and vulnerable girls. Over the years, several victims of Grooming Jihad have come forward with their stories. Their horrifying experiences include being deceived into a relationship or marriage by a Muslim boy disguised under a Hindu name, who only revealed later that he is a Muslim and forced the woman to convert. The pressurising tactics mostly include threatening to make viral their intimate photographs and videos, isolating the victim from her family, boy’s family members ganging up against the woman, beatings or threatening them with physical assault, force-feeding beef, insulting Hinduism and Hindus etc.
Though this phenomenon is long-established and extremely deep-seated, the year 2020 has seen many states not only acknowledging the occurrences but also enacting laws to curb the menace of Grooming Jihad. This includes many BJP ruled states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.
We at OpIndia have closely followed and reported many Grooming Jihad cases in the past.
