A crowd began gathering outside Deolali Camp Police Station in Nashik on the evening of March 25 and by midnight, an eyewitness told Newslaundry, there were at least 200 people outside. “Most of them were youngsters, and more kept arriving,” he said. “Many had a tilak on their foreheads.”
By 1:01 am on March 26, the first FIR was filed.
It concerned a 23-year-old woman employee at TCS Nashik who alleged that a colleague, Danish Shaikh, had made a false promise of marriage, forced her into a physical relationship, made derogatory remarks about Hindu deities, and praised Islam – and who later discovered he was already married with two children.
Nitin Gaikwad, a local Shiv Sena leader from Deolali, has since told Newslaundry that he and Hindutva groups were involved from the start.
“We went to meet the girl and counselled her for at least two to three days, helping her understand the situation. Several Hindutva organisations joined us in this process, after which we went to the police station and got the FIR registered,” he said. When asked to name the organisations involved, he did not specify any. “All Hindu organisations came together, the entire Sakal Hindu Samaj stood united.” He added: “After the first FIR, we helped the police identify the accused’s friends. We kept sharing information, and the police acted on it.”
That first FIR named three people. Over the following week, eight more FIRs were filed – all at the Mumbai Naka police station, four of them in the middle of one night.
Most of the nine FIRs contain allegations of sexual harassment and derogatory remarks about Hindu deities. Not one invokes Maharashtra’s anti-conversion law, the Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam, 2026. However, seven of the FIRs invoke Section 3(5) of the BNS – the common intention provision – which points to joint liability and indicates the police view at least part of the alleged conduct as coordinated.
Police Commissioner Sandeep Karnik has said the accused “formed a group or gang in the office” and “misused their authority or position” to harass colleagues “sexually and religiously”.
The case then took a life of its own. Television channels ran it around the clock. It was called “corporate jihad” and “love jihad”. A Supreme Court plea has sought to classify organised coercive conversion as a terrorist act. Politicians have weighed in.
The most awkward challenge to the “corporate jihad” coverage so far has been the claims made by the family of Nida Khan, who was described in several media reports as an HR manager and the “mastermind” of an organised grooming gang. Some reports even linked her to a Red Fort terror blast accused.
Khan is a 26-year-old process associate with no recruitment or leadership role, her company says. She is named in just the first of the nine FIRs, and is accused of mocking Hindu deities. She was called absconding but her family says she is pregnant and has been at her home in Mumbai throughout.
This story was originally published in newslaundry.com. Read the full story here.