On July 5, Wednesday, Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur police arrested two youths named Lucky Khan and Suhaib Khan. The duo are accused of kidnapping, blackmailing and raping a minor Hindu girl and later forcing her to convert to Islam.
According to the police, the accused, Lucky Khan and his friend Suhaib Khan, who are residents of the Nawabad locality in Jhansi were arrested at the Sarita Palace Hotel in Kanpur, where they had forcefully taken the victim and gangraped her.
थाना कल्यानपुर पुलिस टीम ने हिन्दू लड़की को बर्गलाकर धर्म परिवर्तन करने व बलात्कार करने वाले 02 अभियुक्तो को गिरफ्तार किया । @Uppolice @dgpup pic.twitter.com/U8UCi78GAj
— POLICE COMMISSIONERATE KANPUR NAGAR (@kanpurnagarpol) July 6, 2023
The Kanpur police said that during interrogation, the accused confessed that they had befriended the victim on Instagram a few months back. While chatting, Lucky Khan managed to procure the victim’s photos, which he morphed and started using to blackmail her into meeting him. The girl, however, kept refusing to meet them.
On Wednesday, the accused reached Kanpur and booked a room in the Sarita Palace Hotel. They then went to Shivrajpur village, where the girl stayed. They told her that they wanted to talk to her about something and urged her to meet them. The youths threatened to make her photos viral on social media if she refused.
When the girl came to meet the duo, they forcefully made her sit in a car and took her to the hotel. There they took turns to rape her. They also forced her to convert to Islam.
Notably, when the youth came out of the hotel along with the girl, they had an argument with her. When the hotel staff saw this, they informed the police.
Inspector Kalyanpur Dhananjay Pandey said, “Medical examination of the girl has been done. On the victim’s complaint, an FIR has been registered against the accused for kidnapping, gang rape, threatening, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation, 5/6 POCSO Act and UP Law Against Religion Change Prohibition Act. The accused were produced in court and sent to jail on Thursday.”
Social media has become the new breeding ground for love jihad. In another such case reported in June this year from Aligarh, a youth named Zihad with an account by the name of Aryan, befriended a Hindu woman on Instagram. For 6 months, they kept messaging each other on the social media platform until they decided to elope.
The Meerut-based Zahid arrived in Aligarh on 17 June, Saturday. He handed some intoxicating pills to the Hindu woman and asked her to mix them with her family’s food. Following this, they hatched a plan to elope at night.
Zahid also told the woman to get money and ornaments from her house. They were caught by the police shortly after attempting to flee. She has been handed over to her family.
