Azmal Lashkar (26) posed as Ashish Dubey to entrap and rape a Mumbai woman (23) and her niece (17). He was arrested on Sunday by Mumbai police.
As per a PTI report –
“A 26 year-old man was arrested on Sunday for allegedly raping and making pregnant a 17-year-old girl by threatening to make viral her aunt’s sex video with him, Mumbai Police said.
The accused, Azmal Lashkar alias Ashish Dubey, had allegedly raped the 23-year-old woman under the pretext of marriage and filmed the act without her knowledge, a Bangur Police station official said.
According to police, the accused got acquainted with the woman and her niece at a party by posing himself as Ashish Dubey. The official said Laskhar hails from Assam, but has been staying in Mumbai these days. He was arrested from suburban Khar.
He was booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for rape and under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act on a complaint lodged by parents of the teenager.”
With a rash of such sexual grooming cases, colloquially known as Love Jihad / Rape Jihad, coming to the fore, an amendment is urgently needed to existing laws to hand out exemplary punishment to rapists who fake their identity to get close to victims, and who are driven by religious bigotry to commit such heinous crimes.
But we need a huge preventive drive as well – a massive public information & de-radicalisation campaign needs to be carried out to fight this scourge by addressing & educating both the victim community (Hindu girls) and the perpetrators (Muslim youth brainwashed by radical mauvlis/imams to regard non-Muslim girls as ‘easy meat’).
In UK, the same phenomenon exists in the form of ‘grooming gangs’ where over 80% of perpetrators were found to be British Pakistani men. One brave Rotherham grooming gang survivor has spoken up –
“I was taken to various houses and flats above takeaways in the north of England, to be beaten, tortured and raped over 100 times. I was called a “white slag” and “white c***” as they beat me.
They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn’t dress “modestly”, that they believed I deserved to be “punished”. They said I had to “obey” or be beaten.
..Like terrorists, they (groomers) firmly believe that the crimes they carry out are justified by their religious beliefs. The camaraderie, protection, money, and kudos that these groups offer, makes them a strong pull for anyone.
Religious indoctrination is a big part of the process of getting young men involved in grooming gang crime. Religious ideas about purity, virginity, modesty and obedience are taken to the extreme until horrific abuse becomes the norm. It was taught to me as a concept of “othering”.
“Muslim girls are good and pure because they dress modestly, covering down to their ankles and wrists, and covering their crotch area. They stay virgins until marriage. They are our girls.
“White girls and non-Muslim girls are bad because you dress like slags. You show the curves of your bodies (showing the gap between your thighs means you’re asking for it) and therefore you’re immoral. White girls sleep with hundreds of men. You are the other girls. You are worthless and you deserve to be gang-raped.”
This hateful religious hypocrisy strikes people to their very core. But it’s far from unique. My main perpetrator quoted scriptures from the Quran to me as he beat me.
…Grooming gang crime is upheld by religious extremism. Like Sweden, we must officially recognise this, and work to curb extremist preaching, teach religious counter-narratives, give gendered extremism education and deliver quality relationships education.”
In Bharat, our law enforcement agencies, legal establishment and most of all our intelligentsia are yet to fully acknowledge that a similar ‘grooming gang’ menace aka Love/Rape Jihad exists, despite troubling patterns emerging each time the matter has been investigated.
A decade back, Kerala & Karnataka High Courts had asked state police to probe a rash of such cases after some parents filed complaints over their missing daughters. Based on police reports, the Kerala High Court concluded that there were indications of forceful religious conversions under the garb of love in the state, and asked the government to consider enacting a law to prohibit such deceptive acts.
The court observed it was clear there was a ‘concerted effort to convert girls of a particular religion to another with the blessings of some outfits’. The outfits named in police reports: fundamentalist Islamic organisation National Democratic Front (NDF) and its college wing Campus Front. Quoting statistics, the court said during the last four years, 3,000-4,000 religious conversions had taken place after ‘love affairs’. The court observed that ‘Love Jihad’ incidents really grew after 1996 with blessings of some Muslim organisations.
Even Christian organisations in Kerala have spoken up against ‘Love Jihad’ from time to time, with Global Council of Indian Christians terming it a ‘global Islamisation project’.
In 2017, NIA was asked by Supreme Court to investigate love jihad marriages in Kerala, and the investigative agency submitted before the court that it had detected a pattern of individuals belonging to certain organisations (PFI, the successor to NDF) targeting Hindu & non-Muslim girls for conversion and marriage.
Yet, left-liberals are quick to dismiss ‘Love Jihad’ as a hoax spread by ‘communal Hindus’ as no evidence has been unearthed of any ‘nation-wide organized conspiracy’ thus far. But this is deliberate obfuscation – expecting to find one single organisation pulling the strings across Bharat is facile.
Muslim sexual groomers are motivated by Islamist teachings to target non-Muslim girls for ‘fun’ or for more serious crimes like rape, forced conversion and marriage. Muhammad Shafi from Kerala lured and sexually assaulted over 30 Hindu women after posing as an NRI surgeon, and confessed to investigators that he never targeted Muslim women since they belong to his religion. He thought it is a sin to molest a Muslim girl, but never felt any remorse for his Hindu victims.
Such groomers can operate as lone wolfs, in loose groups which network through community centres or mosques, or at a more organized level with institutional support such as we have seen with PFI or the Bharchundi dargah in Pakistan headed by Sufi preacher cum mainstream politician Mian Mithoo.
Preventive measures to tackled the Islamist mindset which is behind the sexual grooming aka Love/Rape Jihad menace are the need of the hour.
Updates
The article was updated on 5 PM, 14 Jan with some additional commentary on how the Indian state has tried to suppress the ‘Love Jihad’ issue despite police & courts unearthing some disturbing facts in last 10 years.
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