Teenage Hindu girl is burned alive ‘by Muslim stalker in India who set her alight with petrol as she slept’: Protests break out over ‘love jihad’ bid to ‘force her to convert to Islam’
- Ankita Singh, 19, died after Shahrukh Hussain allegedly set her on fire in Ranchi
- Shahrukh had been harassing Ankita for months and threatened to kill her
- Her death has sparked protests after Hussain, a Muslim, is said to have wanted to convert Ankita, a Hindi, to Islam
A teenage Hindu girl has been burned alive by her alleged Muslim stalker who poured petrol over her and set her alight as she slept at her home in India.
Ankita Singh, 19, succumbed to her severe burn injuries and died on Sunday at a hospital in the city of Ranchi, in the eastern state of Jharkhand, five days after Shahrukh Hussain allegedly set her on fire.
Her death has sparked protests in the state after Shahrukh, a Muslim, allegedly wanted to commit ‘love jihad’ by marrying Ankita and forcing her to convert from Hinduism to Islam.
Ankita’s distraught father, Sanjeev Singh, said: ‘Shahrukh used to tell her – marry me, accept Islam, else I will make your life hell.’
When Ankita rejected Shahrukh’s advances, he allegedly harassed her on the phone for days and, on the night before setting her on fire, he told her he would kill her if she did not meet him.
In the early hours of August 23, while Ankita was sleeping near a window, Shahrukh allegedly poured petrol over her and threw a lit match on her. She suffered severe burns on 45 per cent of her body and succumbed to her injuries on Sunday, a doctor told BBC Hindi.
Police have arrested Shahrukh and another man who allegedly provided the alleged stalker with the petrol used in the attack.
Ankita Singh, 19, succumbed to her severe burn injuries and died on Sunday at a hospital in the city of Ranchi, in the eastern state of Jharkhand, five days after Shahrukh Hussain allegedly set her on fire
Her death has sparked protests in the state after Shahrukh, a Muslim, allegedly wanted to commit ‘love jihad’ by marrying Ankita and forcing her to convert from Hinduism to Islam
Shahrukh Hussain has been arrested after allegedly killing Ankita
Ankita’s father Sanjeev claimed that Shahrukh had been stalking his daughter for more than a year and he would follow her as she walked to school.
‘He kept on forcing my daughter to marry and convert for months. He was a one-sided lover, a stalker,’ Sanjeev told Swarajya news outlet.
Sanjeev said his daughter, who wanted to be a police officer, began to miss school to avoid Shahrukh but he would constantly call her mobile.
Protests have erupted in Jharkhand over the allegations that Shahrukh had allegedly tried to commit ‘love jihad’ by forcing Ankita to convert to Islam and marry him.
The term ‘love-jihad’ is a term radical Hindu groups have used to accuse Muslim men of trying to convert Hindu women by marriage.
Ankita managed to give police officers a statement from her hospital bed and told them Shahrukh had threatened to kill her if she did not meet him on the day before she died.
She said: ‘He called me again around 8 pm on Monday and told me that he would kill me if I did not talk to him. I informed my father about the threat after which he assured me that he would talk to the man’s family on Tuesday. After having our dinner, we went to sleep. I was sleeping in another room.’
‘On Tuesday morning, I experienced a sensation of pain on my back and could smell something burning.
‘I found him running away when I opened my eyes. I started screaming in pain and went to my father’s room. My parents doused the fire and took me to the hospital.’
When Ankita (pictured) rejected Shahrukh’s advances, he allegedly harassed her on the phone for days and, on the night before setting her on fire, he told her he would kill her if she did not meet him
Ankita’s father Sanjeev (pictured) claimed that Shahrukh had been stalking his daughter for more than a year and he would follow her as she walked to school
Her family have been left heartbroken, with her grandmother saying: ‘Now we only have her memories. This house feels empty.’
Thousands of women and girls are stalked every year in India, according to government data, and there have been dozens of cases of stalkers attacking women who have rejected them.
In 2018, a stalker threw acid over a married woman after she refused his proposal on Valentine’s Day, leaving her permanently scarred.
The 30-year-old victim, from a small village near Jaipur, in Rajasthan, northern India, was working as a cleaner in a mall when the accused, Mehboob Khan, approached her with a bottle of acid in his hand.
Khan had been stalking the victim for over two years and lived near her, police said.
In 2016, a 17-year-old girl was set on fire by a stalker in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
In a statement to the police before she died, the girl said the man walked into her house in Villupuram on Monday, set himself on fire and hugged her, all the while saying that he would not let her live for spurning him.
‘She said he had stalked her for over a year and she had said no repeatedly,’ police inspector Senthil Vinayakan said.
‘The man has been booked for a similar offense earlier and had even spent time in jail. But no one anticipated this and now they are both dead.’
A month earlier, a software engineer was hacked to death in broad daylight at a train station in the port city of Chennai. The man arrested for her murder had been stalking her for months, police said.
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