On Friday, the Madhya Pradesh Police registered an FIR against a person named Nihal Khan for deceitfully assaulting a Hindu woman and allegedly forcing her to accept the religion of Islam. The 31-year-old victim, who is a physiotherapist by profession, said that Nihal never revealed his full name and developed physical relations with her assuring of marriage.
According to the reports, the accused Nihal Khan is the Director of a General Hospital in Bhopal. The victim used to visit the General Hospital at Depot intersection area of the city on call. The duo met there and soon became friends. The victim in a video statement said that Khan never revealed his full name and always introduced himself as just Nihal. The victim also never bothered to ask his full name as they had become good friends. “We started sharing personal things about ourselves. He came to know that I was already a divorcee and that I was alone. He used to show sympathy. This is how he started visiting my house”, she said.
On November 20, 2018, when the parents of the victim were not at home, Khan arrived and proposed to her for marriage. He promised that he would never leave her and after that developed physical relations with her. He kept on repeating the act, while the victim started to press him for legalizing the relationship.
“I pressed him for marriage. He started ignoring me. Later to my shock, he told me that he didn’t believe in the religious marriage system but believed only in Nikah. He asked me to convert my religion to Islam and refused to marry if I didn’t convert”, the victim stated. She added that he hit her and abused her as she told him that she would complain about the incident to the Police. “He said he did not believe in the Police and the Courts and also threatened to kill me”, she said.
The victim in the Police complaint also mentioned that the accused had duped her for money. The hospital that she owned in the Ashoka Garden area of Bhopal was deceitfully acquired by the accused. “Also I was a partner at the General Hospital. It cost me more than Rs 8 lakhs. Nihal forged the documents of both the hospitals and discharged my name from the papers. He said that he would return me the assets only if I get converted to Islam”, she noted in the FIR.
Recent cases of Grooming Jihad:
It is important to note that this is not the first time that such a case of Grooming Jihad has been reported. Last month, a minor girl was raped, blackmailed and exploited by a man named Kasim who had allegedly claimed to be Rahul. Kasim had allegedly lured the girl into a relationship online by identifying himself as ‘Rahul’. He belonged to the same neighbourhood as the victim and had gradually gained her confidence, eventually raping her and making obscene video clips to blackmail her further.
In Mumbai, a 23-year-old man named Mohammed Ansari was arrested in connection to the brutal murder of an 18-year-old NEET aspirant girl named Sonam Shukla. The victim had gone missing after she left her home for tuition. As per the police, the teenager did not attend her tuition classes and instead went to one of her female friend’s houses before leaving the place. The 19-year-old had gone to the residence of Mohammed Ansari, a graduate student and a bakery owner, where he killed her over a heated argument with her.
The Haridwar police had arrested a youth named Sadiq who posed as a Hindu to befriend a minor girl and raped her thereafter. According to the FIR filed in the case on April 10, 2022, Sadiq had introduced himself as Ratan Tyagi to lure the Hindu girl. He then threatened her with her intimate pictures and sexually assaulted her.
Besides this, there are several similar cases of Love Jihad, where Muslim men have lied about their religious identity to trap innocent non-Muslim women to forcefully marry and sexually abuse them. OpIndia has documented several such cases over the last few years.
The Madhya Pradesh Police in the recent case has registered an FIR against accused Nihal Khan and has booked him under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Madhya Pradesh Religious Freedom Act. The Police officers have also launched a manhunt to nab the accused who is absconding. The investigations are underway.
