  We analyze the galaxy pairs in a set of volume limited samples from the SDSS
to study the effects of minor interactions on the star formation rate (SFR) and
colour of galaxies. We carefully design control samples of the isolated
galaxies by matching the stellar mass and redshift of the minor pairs. The SFR
distributions and colour distributions in the minor pairs differ from their
controls at $>99\%$ significance level. We also simultaneously match the
control galaxies in stellar mass, redshift and local density to assess the role
of the environment. The null hypothesis can be rejected at $>99\%$ confidence
level even after matching the environment. Our analysis shows a quenching in
the minor pairs where the degree of quenching decreases with the increasing
pair separation and plateaus beyond 50 kpc. We also prepare a sample of minor
pairs with $H_{\alpha}$ line information. We calculate the SFR of these
galaxies using the $H_{\alpha}$ line and repeat our analysis. We observe a
quenching in the $H_{\alpha}$ sample too. We find that the majority of the
minor pairs are quiescent systems that could be quenched due to minor
interactions. Combining data from the Galaxy Zoo and Galaxy Zoo2, we find that
only $\sim 1\%$ galaxies have a dominant bulge, $4\%-7\%$ galaxies host a bar,
and $5\%-10\%$ galaxies show the AGN activity in minor pairs. This indicates
that the presence of bulge, bar and AGN activity plays an insignificant role in
quenching the galaxies in minor pairs. The more massive companion satisfies the
criteria for mass quenching in most of the minor pairs. We propose that the
stripping and starvation likely caused the quenching in the less massive
companion at a later stage of evolution.
