Overview of human rights abuses and violations against India’s religious minorities from 1 January to 30 April, 2026.
The first four months of 2026 culminated in what is likely to be the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s most consequential provincial election victory in India since it ascended to power at the federal level in 2014. In early May, as electoral authorities announced the results for polls held in four states and one Union Territory, the BJP emerged triumphant in West Bengal—an opposition bastion it had never won in its 46-year history—crushing the incumbent to secure over two-thirds of the state assembly. In neighbouring Assam, the BJP’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma—who had publicly declared that his job is to make Muslims “suffer”—was also returned to power with a resounding majority. The BJP and its allies will now directly rule—at the central and state level—over 78% of India’s population, across 22 of 36 states and Union Territories.
The prelude to this staggering result—the period under review in this edition of the India Persecution Tracker, from January to April 2026—saw state actors continuing to deploy a long-documented and expanding repertoire of coercive practices against minorities, particularly Muslims, including by killing and maiming them in staged police “encounters”, and torturing and detaining them en masse. At election rallies across poll-bound states, India’s top political leadership—including Prime Minister Narendra Modi—continued to deploy dehumanising language against Muslims that did not merely incite hostility against them, but also worked to constitute them as a racialised outsider group: defined not by their conduct as individuals but by their descent, language, name, and habitation, and marked for identification, removal, and exclusion. As the Supreme Court watched on, India’s electoral authorities oversaw a systematic purging of over 56 million individuals from electoral rolls nationwide, with exclusion rates highest in Muslim-majority districts in West Bengal. Alongside, Muslim families across the country continued to have their homes, livelihoods, and places of worship bulldozed, their neighbourhoods rezoned into legally segregated enclaves, and their children’s schools seized or shut down—while many continued to be physically forced across the border at gunpoint, expelled by their own country and denied the right to return. The electorate’s resounding endorsement and rewarding of this programme of oppression signals its steady consolidation into something more permanent: a system of institutionalised domination, maintained through law, policy, and coercion—what international experts speaking to the situation in Assam, have concluded, constitutes apartheid.
The incidents documented in this edition, covering the period from 1 January to 30 April 2026, are not exhaustive—they represent only those reported in the media and verified, a fraction of the total given the fast-shrinking space for independent reporting in India. Yet the patterns they reveal are themselves significant. A brief overview of the key findings:
- States ruled or controlled by the BJP —particularly Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Kashmir —continued to witness the most serious abuses by state actors, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture and ill-treatment. During the period, at least four Muslims were killed in incidents involving police, armed forces, or other state security personnel, including in staged ‘encounter’ shootings in Uttar Pradesh, a disputed army operation in Kashmir, and a custodial death in suspicious circumstances in Delhi. Authorities across multiple states continued to carry out widespread and arbitrary arrests of Muslims in numerous pretexts, while ‘half encounter’ shootings and custodial abuse by police continued in Uttar Pradesh despite recent rebukes from the state High Court and the United Nations, and border security personnel in Assam shot and critically injured two Bengali Muslim men.
Alongside, Manipur witnessed the return of inter-ethnic violence, with at least 15 fresh deaths, including of two children. See sections on: [Deprivation of Life — State Actors] [Arrests and Detentions] [Torture and Ill-Treatment — State Actors] - Hindu nationalist non-state actors continued to harass, intimidate, assault, and murder religious minorities across the country, particularly Muslims, with impunity. During the period, at least 13 Muslims were killed in religiously-motivated hate crimes by Hindu extremists across eight states. Communal mob violence targeting Muslims was reported in at least twelve states, driven by Hindu religious processions and localised triggers, while other individual hate crimes against Muslims were documented across 18 states. Christian communities also faced a sharp escalation in hostility. See sections on: [Deprivation of Life — Non-State Actors] [Torture and Ill-Treatment — Non-State Actors]
- The nationwide campaign of persecution against Bengali-speaking Muslims continued to intensify across multiple fronts. India’s electoral authorities purged over 56 million voters from rolls across 13 states through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), with Muslims disproportionately affected—accounting for 34% of deletions in West Bengal despite comprising 27% of the population, including as much as 95% of exclusions in some key constituencies. In Assam, elections were held on a ‘communally gerrymandered’ constituency map that had reduced Muslim-majority seats from approximately 35 to 20. In parallel, the forced ‘pushback’ expulsion of Bengali-speaking Muslims at gunpoint continued at scale, particularly from Assam, while new detention infrastructure was established in Mumbai and Delhi alone accounted for over 1,500 deportations in the past nine months. See sections on: [Disenfranchisement & Denationalisation] [Forced Expulsions & Refoulement]
- Fuelling these abuses was the continuing escalation in hateful, anti-minority rhetoric by senior BJP leaders. During the 2026 campaign season, the BJP’s use of hate speech reached industrial scale: a Bellingcat investigation found that nearly two in five official BJP social media posts in the Assam and West Bengal campaigns met the United Nations’ definition of hate speech. India’s top political leaders—Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Shah, and Chief Ministers Sarma and Adityanath—personally drove the dehumanisation of Muslims across dozens of campaign speeches, branding them as ‘infiltrators’ and calling for their identification, removal, and social exclusion. India’s mainstream media continued to play a central role in amplifying and normalising anti-Muslim narratives—both through active platforming and conspicuous omission. Not one leader or outlet faced investigation, prosecution, or sanction of any kind. See section on: [Advocacy of Religious Hatred]
- At the policy level, BJP-governed states continued to intensify the legal and administrative architecture of exclusion targeting Muslims. Two more states—Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh—enacted or significantly toughened anti-conversion laws, which are now systematically weaponised against Muslims and Christians across the country, while Gujarat became the second Indian state to pass a Uniform Civil Code overriding Muslim personal law. BJP-ruled state governments continued to carry out punitive demolitions and evictions targeting Muslim communities across multiple states, in defiance of Supreme Court directives mandating due process, while Rajasthan and Gujarat moved to legally entrench residential segregation of Muslims through new or expanded legislation restricting Muslim property ownership. An intensified crackdown on Muslim educational institutions saw approximately 4,000 madrassas placed under counter-terrorism scrutiny in Uttar Pradesh, nearly 300 schools seized in Jammu and Kashmir, and the abolition of Uttarakhand’s Madrasa Board. See sections on: [Religious Freedom] [Discrimination in ESC Rights]
- Indian authorities also continued to intensify their targeting of journalists and independent media, civil society organisations, academics, and other political dissenters. The government introduced a new bill empowering authorities to seize the assets of NGOs whose foreign-funding licences are cancelled—with retrospective effect—while Parliament passed legislation stripping transgender persons of their right to self-identification of gender. See section on: [Shrinking Civic Space & Democratic Backsliding]
- None of this would be possible without the complicity of India’s domestic institutions, which continued to fail to ensure effective remedy, protection of rights, or accountability for abuses—and in many cases, actively obstructed them. During the reporting period, courts acquitted dozens of accused in cases relating to previous episodes of targeted anti-Muslim violence—in each instance, citing the prosecution’s failure to effectively present evidence. Even as some lower level judges delivered moments of institutional courage, their efforts were undermined in myriad ways, including executive defiance, and the increasing reluctance of the Supreme Court to engage meaningfully in contentious issues impacting minorities. India’s National Human Rights Commission—now the subject of an unprecedented downgrade recommendation by GANHRI—devoted institutional resources to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories demonising Muslims, while taking no action on any of the recurring abuse patterns noted above. See section on: [Lack of Effective Remedy]
Some international actors, including UN bodies and experts, continued to raise alarm during the reporting period about the deteriorating situation in India:
- In a public statement, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) regretted India’s roll-back of transgender rights, warning that it would have “far-reaching impacts.”
- Acting under its Early Warning & Urgent Action Procedure (EWUAP), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued three letters to the Indian government: on the discriminatory targeting of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam; on the situation of tribal and forest-dwelling Indigenous Peoples in India; and on large-scale violations by security forces against Indigenous Adivasi Peoples in Chhattisgarh.
- UN Special Procedures mandate-holders made two joint public statements: The Special Rapporteurs on Torture and on Extrajudicial Killings condemned the practice of “encounter” and “half-encounter” shootings by police, particularly by forces in Uttar Pradesh, and against Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis; A group of 10 mandate-holders, including the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, drew attention to the prolonged detention of Sikh British national Jagtar Singh Johal, warning that it is a form of “psychological torture.”
- The WGAD issued an Opinion concluding that the prolonged detention of Muslim student leader Umar Khalid—who was denied bail by the Supreme Court in January—is arbitrary.
- Special Rapporteurs also sent allegation letters to India on “encounter” and “half encounter shootings”; India’s draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act; and on the roll-back of transgender rights.
- The United States Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reaffirmed its previous designation of India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), and called for targeted sanctions against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) (the BJP’s parent organisation) as well as India’s external intelligence agency.
- The Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Early Warning Project ranked India as the country facing the fourth-highest risk of intrastate mass killing.
- Multiple international assessments of civic space published during the reporting period registered India’s continued democratic decline. The V-Dem Democracy Report 2026 classified India as an “electoral autocracy“—a designation it has held since 2017—ranking it 105 out of 179 on the Liberal Democracy Index, down five places from the previous year. Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2026 scored India 62 out of 100 (“Partly Free”), a 14-point decline since 2005. The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index dropped India six places to 157 out of 180 in the “very serious” category. CIVICUS retained India’s “Repressed” rating (30/100).
- The Panel of Independent International Experts to Examine Alleged Violations of International Law Against Muslims in India (PIIE)—a group of prominent jurists who among themselves have investigated and prosecuted human rights atrocities and international crimes in Myanmar, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Rwanda and Sierra Leone—published a report on the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Assam. The Panel found reasonable grounds to believe that international crimes may have been committed in both states—among them persecution, torture, and deportation and forcible transfer of population, as crimes against humanity—with the pattern of conduct in Assam rising, in their assessment, to the level of apartheid. (SAJC provided research and secretariat assistance to the panel.)
During the period under review, Muslims continued to be killed by state actors in a range of contexts. In Uttar Pradesh, two Muslim brothers were killed in police “encounters” within 48 hours of each other, days after Chief Minister Adityanath publicly ordered “strict action” in the case that led to their pursuit. In Jammu & Kashmir, a Muslim man was killed by the Indian Army in a disputed “encounter”. In Delhi, a Muslim man died in police custody amid allegations of torture.
The cases highlighted above are illustrative of long-running patterns documented by the IPT, rather than an exhaustive account of state-actor killings of Muslims during the period. As noted above, government data tabled in parliament in March 2026 recorded 170 custodial deaths in the preceding year alone, with only one case of disciplinary action in five years.
In February 2026, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions warned of ‘systemic’ policing failures in India, citing credible information of a ‘pervasive pattern of excessive and often lethal use of force by police’, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Assam, with Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis disproportionately affected.
These latest cases raise serious concerns under international human rights law, particularly with respect to the right to life under Article 6 of the ICCPR and the State’s duty to conduct prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations under Article 2(3), as elaborated in the Minnesota Protocol. In the Ganderbal case, the failure to identify the deceased, the denial of remains to the family, and the reported shifting of the responsible unit point to the continuing pattern of impunity for security forces operating in Jammu & Kashmir documented in successive editions of the IPT. India’s obligations under the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials remain largely unmet.
In 2025, the IPT documented the killings of at least 23 Muslims in incidents involving police, armed forces, or other state security personnel—up from 21 in 2024 and 20 in 2023.
During the period under review, at least 13 Muslims—including two women, a 15-year-old boy, and a 65-year-old man—were killed by Hindu extremist non-state actors in religiously-motivated hate crimes across eight states. One further death, a suicide by the wife of a lynching victim, was directly linked to the violence documented below. The contexts included cow vigilantism, suspicion of being ‘Bangladeshi’, an interfaith relationship, and localised disputes that escalated along communal lines. Bihar recorded the highest number of fatalities (4 killings and 1 related suicide), followed by Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh (2 each).
The cases documented above are illustrative of long-running patterns of religiously-motivated mob violence against Muslims. In several cases, the immediate trigger was a mundane dispute—over parking, over Holi celebrations, over a land boundary—that rapidly escalated into lethal mob violence along communal lines, consistent with the broader enabling environment of anti-Muslim hate speech and vigilantism documented in successive editions of the IPT.
These cases raise serious concerns under international human rights law, particularly with respect to the right to life under Article 6 of the ICCPR and the State’s positive obligation to protect individuals from violence by private actors. Under established international law, States may be held responsible for killings by non-state actors where they fail to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish such conduct. In several of the cases documented above, police responses fell well short of this standard—disputing the cause of death when post-mortem evidence contradicted the official account, registering FIRs against victims rather than perpetrators, or failing to make arrests despite video evidence and named accused.
In July 2025, a group of UN Special Procedures mandate-holders—on freedom of religion or belief; cultural rights; minority issues; and summary executions—issued an allegation letter to India highlighting reports of over 300 such killings since 2014, disproportionately of Muslims. The experts expressed concern that impunity for such violations has ‘generated cycles of repression,’ and noted that States may be held responsible for the conduct of non-state actors if they fail to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and respond to such conduct. In 2025, the IPT documented the killings of 27 Muslims in incidents involving mob violence or vigilante attacks by Hindu extremist non-state actors—up from 15 in 2024 and 25 in 2023.
In the first four months of 2026, Indian authorities continued to carry out widespread and arbitrary arrests and detentions of Muslims across multiple states. These included the criminalisation of routine religious observance—with Muslims arrested for holding iftar gatherings, offering prayers, and attending religious ceremonies—in Uttar Pradesh and other BJP-governed states; escalating enforcement of cow-protection laws, marked by mass arrests, preventive detention, and the imposition of life sentences; the continued targeting of Muslims and Christians under anti-conversion laws across at least five states; the deployment of counter-terrorism and preventive detention laws against Kashmiri Muslims, including student protesters; and disproportionate arrest patterns following communal violence triggered by Hindu nationalist processions.
The cases documented above, which are illustrative, constitute arbitrary deprivation of liberty in violation of Article 9 ICCPR, carried out without credible legal basis, in a discriminatory manner, or in reprisal for the peaceful exercise of protected rights. The systematic and disproportionate targeting of Muslims in the application of these laws also violates the prohibition of discrimination. Where arrests follow the exercise of freedom of religion, expression, or peaceful assembly, they constitute not merely violations of liberty but also attacks on the underlying protected rights—producing a chilling effect intended to suppress the religious and civic life of India’s Muslim communities.
During the first four months of 2026, state actors continued to be implicated in serious cases of custodial torture, assault, and ill-treatment of Muslims. These included the continuation of ‘half-encounter’ shootings in Uttar Pradesh; multiple reports of custodial abuse by police forces, including a custodial death in Delhi, the public parading of an accused man in Kanpur, and the use of communal slurs by Railway Protection Force personnel; and the shooting and critical injury of two Muslim men by Border Security Force personnel in Assam.
The cases documented above are illustrative of broader patterns. Torture and ill-treatment remain endemic across India’s law enforcement apparatus, routinely employed as tools of policing and, in the case of Muslims, frequently shaped by discriminatory religious motives. India has yet to ratify the UN Convention against Torture or enact a standalone domestic law criminalising torture—a gap that contributes to near-total impunity for perpetrators and the absence of effective remedy for victims. A June 2025 report by REDRESS highlighted this normalisation of custodial torture in India and the lack of effective safeguards for victims. Complementing these findings, a report by SAJC had documented recurring patterns of custodial violence specifically targeting Muslims, finding that Muslim detainees were routinely subjected not only to severe physical abuse, but also to degrading treatment that explicitly targeted their religious identity.
Hindu nationalist non-state actors continued to subject religious minorities across India to widespread physical violence, intimidation, and humiliation during the reporting period. Communal mob violence targeting Muslims was reported in at least twelve states, driven by Hindu religious processions, cow vigilantism, and localised disputes rapidly given a religious dimension—with the state response in multiple cases compounding the harm through selective arrests, punitive demolitions, and the displacement of Muslim communities. Over 48 individual hate crimes against Muslims were documented across 18 states, including beatings, forced chanting of Hindu slogans, stripping, and—in at least two cases—victims being set on fire. Christian communities too faced a sharp escalation in hostility. Separately, fresh inter-ethnic violence in Manipur between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities killed at least fifteen people, including two children and a legislator, despite a change of government and disarmament efforts.
The patterns documented above raise serious concerns under international human rights law, particularly in relation to the rights to life, security of person, freedom from torture and ill-treatment, and freedom of religion. Under the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture, states are required to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish violations by non-state actors—and to provide effective remedy to victims. The latest reports continue to point to failures on each count: perpetrators frequently operated with impunity or political protection, while victims faced police inaction, retaliatory criminal charges, or outright complicity by state authorities. Rather than reflecting isolated institutional failures, these patterns indicate a climate in which non-state violence against religious minorities is tolerated, and in many cases facilitated, by state action and inaction alike.
During the period under review, mass disenfranchisement of Muslims through India’s nationwide ‘Special Intensive Revision’ of electoral rolls continued at an unprecedented scale, with over 56 million voters removed across 13 states and the exercise now expanding to cover the entire country. In parallel, Assam held elections on a gerrymandered constituency map that had reduced Muslim-majority seats from approximately 35 to 20, while a national delimitation bill that would have further entrenched the ruling party’s electoral advantage was defeated in Parliament.
These developments raise serious concerns under international human rights law, particularly with respect to the right to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections under Article 25 of the ICCPR, and the prohibition of discrimination in the enjoyment of political rights under Article 5(c) of the ICERD. The documented disproportionate impact on Muslims—at every stage of the SIR process, and through the explicit gerrymandering of constituency boundaries to prevent Muslim electoral success—points to a pattern of religiously discriminatory disenfranchisement rather than legitimate electoral administration. The disproportionate exclusion of women engages Article 7 of CEDAW. The failure of the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of the SIR while elections proceed on purged rolls, and the collapse of the appellate process it established constitutes a denial of the right to an effective remedy under Article 2(3) of the ICCPR. The systematic and intentional character of the disenfranchisement—directed at a specific religious community through State administrative machinery, amplified by organised ruling-party campaigns, and compounded by gerrymandering with stated discriminatory intent—also raise concerns regarding persecution under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute.
Mass unilateral expulsions of Bengali-speaking Muslims continue under nationwide ‘pushback’ campaign
The mass expulsion campaign launched by Indian authorities in May 2025—under which thousands of Bengali-speaking Muslims have been detained across India and forcibly pushed across the India-Bangladesh border without due process—continued throughout the first four months of 2026. Assam remained the epicentre, with Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announcing a target of 10,000-50,000 expulsions for the year, and claiming in mid-April that ’20 to 30 illegal migrants’ were being pushed back every night along the border. Alongside, the central government formalised the deportation infrastructure nationwide, directing all states to establish district-level task forces and barbed-wire ‘holding centres.’ Fresh accounts of wrongful expulsions continued to surface—including of Indian citizens pushed into Bangladesh and returned—and Rohingya refugees remained at acute risk of refoulement. On 9 April, Assam held state elections in which the ‘pushback’ campaign featured as an explicit electoral strategy; the BJP was returned to power in the state with a resounding majority, and elected to power for the first time in neighbouring West Bengal. (Also see section on Disenfranchisement and Denationalisation)
In a television interview in mid-April, Sarma described the expulsion method in unprecedented detail: the Border Security Force (BSF) holds individuals for up to 40 days, identifies stretches of the border where Bangladeshi guards are absent, and ‘pushes’ them across at night. On 2 January, Sarma claimed that over 2,000 had been expelled in the preceding three months. On 14 March, he acknowledged that he “cannot drive out 70 lakh [7 million] people” but would “create conditions for them to leave” and “harass them so much that they feel suffocated.” In February, Assam’s minister for Assam Accord implementation told the state assembly that 1,421 ‘illegal foreigners’ had been ‘sent back’ in the 12 months ending January 2026. On 1 May, Bangladesh summoned India’s acting High Commissioner to protest, calling Sarma’s remarks “counterproductive” and “disparaging.” Bangladesh’s border guards told an independent investigator that they had recorded “no further push-in cases in 2026″—a claim contradicted by Sarma’s own statements.
Fresh accounts published during the period continued to document the human cost of India’s new expulsion regime. Taher Ali, a resident of Assam declared a ‘foreigner’ by a Foreigners’ Tribunal, was pushed into Bangladesh three times between December 2025 and January 2026; each time, Bangladeshi authorities returned him, only for Indian forces to push him back again. His son told Scroll: “My country has declared my father a foreigner from Bangladesh. But Bangladesh has returned him twice. Then, which is our country? Do we have any country at all?” In a separate case, a 14-member Bengali Muslim family from Odisha, including children, was pushed into Bangladesh four times. A Netra News investigation found that Bangladesh’s border guards had compiled a list of 120 individuals pushed in by Indian forces—all with Muslim names—and acknowledged the list as incomplete. On 24 April, the Supreme Court gave the central government a “last chance” to clarify its position on six individuals wrongfully deported from West Bengal in June 2025: the Centre had challenged a High Court repatriation order rather than comply, even after a Bangladeshi court declared the deportees to be Indian citizens.
Expulsions also continued from other states. Delhi Police data disclosed that 1,589 people, including 55 Rohingya, had been deported in the nine months to February 2026. In Mumbai, 400 were detained between January and March, and a new detention centre became operational on 26 March. In February, the Ministry of Home Affairs circulated a consolidated deportation policy directing all states to establish district-level task forces to “detect, identify and deport” suspected migrants; create ‘holding centres’ with 10-feet-high barbed-wire boundaries; cancel Aadhaar cards, driving licences, and PAN cards of those identified; and upload their biometrics to a new Foreigners Identification Portal. Border forces were instructed to push back those intercepted at the border “then and there.”
Rohingya refugees continued to face particular risks. India’s new immigration law, operationalised late last year, makes no distinction between refugees and other undocumented migrants, leaving Rohingya with no pathway to regularisation and no statutory protection against deportation. In West Bengal, a 20-year-old Rohingya mother and her five-month old infant were reportedly held in detention beyond their completed sentence in January. The woman was reportedly a victim of human trafficking and sexual violence. In Delhi, Rohingya refugees residing in informal settlements described living “a dog’s life,” denied basic livelihood by their undocumented status.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) wrote to India on 19 January reiterating its previously expressed concerns about the National Register of Citizens, forced evictions, hate speech, and use of force against Bengali-speaking Muslims. Notably, however, the letter did not address the forced expulsion campaign. These forced expulsions raise serious concerns under international human rights law and international criminal law. The prohibition of refoulement—binding on India as customary international law regardless of its non-ratification of the 1951 Refugee Convention—has been breached with respect to Rohingya refugees. The systematic bypassing of individualised assessment, denial of legal representation, and absence of any opportunity to submit reasons against expulsion violate the safeguards required under Article 13 of the ICCPR and the prohibition of collective expulsion. In its report released in March 2026, the Panel of Independent International Experts (PIIE) found reasonable basis to believe that the expulsions amount to deportation or forcible transfer as a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(d) of the Rome Statute, characterising them as “both widespread and systematic” and part of “a state-wide campaign to disenfranchise and exclude.” Deportation was further identified as one of the inhumane acts constituting apartheid under Article 7(1)(j). The Panel concluded that the measures documented in Assam—including forced expulsions, forced evictions, hate speech, and the systematic stripping of citizenship —are “directed towards building conditions for ethnic cleansing,” with the Chief Minister’s stated agenda being “the complete removal of Bengali-speaking Muslims from Assam.”
- During the period under review, state assembly elections held in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, and other states—with voting between 9 and 29 April and results declared on 4 May—drove an unprecedented spike in hate speech and AI-generated disinformation targeting Muslims. The ruling BJP deployed industrialised communal content at a scale not previously documented in Indian elections.
The developments in 2026 confirmed the continuation of trends tracked by India Hate Lab (IHL), a project of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. IHL’s 2025 annual report documented 1,318 in-person hate speech events targeting religious minorities—primarily Muslims—across 21 Indian states: a 13 per cent increase from 2024 (1,165 events), and a 97 per cent increase from 2023 (668 events). Ninety-eight per cent of documented speeches (1,289) targeted Muslims. Approximately 88 per cent of all incidents occurred in BJP-ruled states, NDA coalition states, or BJP-administered Union Territories—a 25 per cent increase from 2024. Half of all documented speeches invoked conspiracy theories such as ‘love jihad’, ‘land jihad’, and ‘population jihad’; 308 included explicit calls for violence. - Two independent investigations published in March–April 2026 documented the BJP’s use of hate speech and AI-generated disinformation through official party accounts during the state election campaigns.
Bellingcat analysed 499 BJP social media posts in Assam and West Bengal and found that nearly two in five met the United Nations’ definition of hate speech, with the largest category targeting Bengali-origin Muslims as ‘infiltrators’. Another report by the Netherlands-based Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy (DAHRD) described the Assam campaign as “the first industrialised AI disinformation operation in an Indian state election,” identifying over 400 AI-generated posts with a combined 45.4 million views. By contrast, posts analysed from the Indian National Congress and the Trinamool Congress included AI-generated imagery but none met the hate speech threshold. The AI content included deepfakes fabricating Congress chief ministerial candidate Gaurav Gogoi as a “Pakistani agent and Muslim sympathiser,” and AI-generated intimate videos depicting his wife, a private individual. The material was distributed through official BJP accounts, including the verified handle of a sitting cabinet minister.
No meaningful enforcement action followed. DAHRD documented 119 breaches of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC)—the Election Commission of India’s code governing political conduct during elections—including 15 attributed to Chief Minister Sarma; none resulted in action. Social media platforms removed zero posts; Meta’s AI-labelling policy produced zero labels on 172 AI-flagged posts. DAHRD noted that the BJP’s West Bengal branch deployed similar messaging during the same elections. - The BJP’s top political leadership—holders of India’s highest constitutional offices—continued to personally drive the dehumanisation of Muslims. The speeches highlighted below represent only a fraction of these leaders’ utterances during the period under review: each made dozens of campaign speeches across poll-bound states, virtually all built around the same core themes—branding Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ (ghuspaithiya), invoking fabricated demographic threats, and calling for their identification, removal, and social exclusion:
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi deployed the term ghuspaithiya (infiltrator) across at least six speeches between January and February 2026—at election rallies in West Bengal and Assam, at a BJP party event in New Delhi, and in Parliament. His messaging followed a consistent pattern previously documented: Muslims framed as ‘infiltrators’ driving a ‘demographic shift’ that threatens national security, youth livelihoods, and tribal land rights; the political opposition accused of protecting them for electoral gain; and calls for their identification and deportation. At Malda on 17 January, he alleged that infiltration had altered the local dialect and fuelled communal riots, declaring that “developed and prosperous countries… are removing infiltrators” and that “it is equally necessary to remove infiltrators from West Bengal.” The following day, at Hooghly, he demanded that infiltrators who had settled “by forging documents” be “identified and sent back to their countries.” In Parliament on 5 February, during the Motion of Thanks debate, he alleged that courts were being “pressured to protect ghuspaithiyas“—a reference to legal challenges against the SIR (see section on Disenfranchisement and Denationalisation)—and claimed that infiltrators were “stealing the rights of the country’s youth” and “grabbing the land of Adivasis.”
Union Home Minister Amit Shah escalated similar rhetoric across at least six speeches during the period, explicitly linking voter roll purges to threatened physical removal. At Mathurapur, West Bengal, on 2 March, he declared that “Bengal must be made infiltration-free” and warned: “only names are being deleted now—they would be removed from the state.” As elections approached, his language intensified: at Kaliabor, Assam, on 2 April, he claimed 64 lakh ‘infiltrators’ were present across seven Assam districts; at Sribhumi on 7 April, he pledged to “remove infiltrators from Assam, one by one”; at Dum Dum, West Bengal, on 22 April, he promised to “deport infiltrators one by one”; and at Balagarh on 23 April, he declared that infiltrators were “eating away the jobs of Bengal’s youth” and would be “selectively rooted out.”
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath made speeches targeting Muslims across at least three states during the period. At Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, on 10 February, he invoked the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid—a 16th-century mosque destroyed by Hindu extremist mobs, on the site of which the BJP-led government subsequently built a Hindu temple—declaring that “those dreaming of the day of Qayamat [the Islamic Day of Judgement] will rot away” and that the mosque “will never be rebuilt till Doomsday.” In April, campaigning outside his home state ahead of state elections, he deployed the ‘infiltrator’ and ‘jihad’ rhetoric at multiple rallies in Barpeta, Assam, and Kalyani and Hooghly, West Bengal, calling for these states to be “freed” from ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’—fabricated conspiracy theories alleging that Muslims seduce Hindu women and systematically acquire land and property as part of a coordinated demographic takeover.
- Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was re-elected to power with a resounding majority, deployed the most sustained and vicious of any leader during the period. On 27 January, he stated in a nationally televised interview: “my job is to make the Miya people suffer,” adding that “4–5 lakh Miyas will get deleted” through the SIR. Days earlier, on 25 January, he had openly admitted that the SIR “targets only Bengali-speaking Muslims” and was “aimed at giving them trouble.” On 5 February, he called for the complete social and economic ostracisation of the community, urging Assamese people: “Don’t give them land, don’t give them rickshaws, don’t give them thelas [pushcarts].” On 29 March, ahead of elections, he pledged to “break the very backbone of the Bangladeshi Miyas.” During campaign rallies in West Bengal in late March, he declared that “Hindus from Bangladesh are refugees; Muslims are infiltrators”—a distinction that explicitly the discriminatory logic of the CAA-SIR framework (see sections on Disenfranchisement and Denationalisation and Forced Expulsions and Refoulement). On 7 February, the BJP’s official Assam account shared an AI-generated video depicting Sarma shooting at Muslims at point-blank range, captioned “foreigner-free Assam” and “why did you not go to Pakistan?” Sarma stated publicly that he would repost the video, this time labelling the figures as ‘Bangladeshi.’
A September 2024 UN Special Procedures allegation letter had highlighted identical rhetoric by these same officials, finding it “likely to lead to further hostility, discrimination and potentially violence” against India’s Muslims. The Indian government is yet to respond, and none of the officials named have been investigated or prosecuted. The Supreme Court’s 2022-2023 directives requiring state governments to take suo motu action in hate speech cases remained unheeded across the country. No state police force is known to have registered a case against any of the officials named above; and as mentioned previously, the Election Commission took no action despite documented breaches of the Model Code of Conduct; and the Supreme Court itself declined to hear petitions challenging Sarma’s rhetoric, directing petitioners instead to the Gauhati High Court. (See section on Lack of Effective Remedy.)
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi deployed the term ghuspaithiya (infiltrator) across at least six speeches between January and February 2026—at election rallies in West Bengal and Assam, at a BJP party event in New Delhi, and in Parliament. His messaging followed a consistent pattern previously documented: Muslims framed as ‘infiltrators’ driving a ‘demographic shift’ that threatens national security, youth livelihoods, and tribal land rights; the political opposition accused of protecting them for electoral gain; and calls for their identification and deportation. At Malda on 17 January, he alleged that infiltration had altered the local dialect and fuelled communal riots, declaring that “developed and prosperous countries… are removing infiltrators” and that “it is equally necessary to remove infiltrators from West Bengal.” The following day, at Hooghly, he demanded that infiltrators who had settled “by forging documents” be “identified and sent back to their countries.” In Parliament on 5 February, during the Motion of Thanks debate, he alleged that courts were being “pressured to protect ghuspaithiyas“—a reference to legal challenges against the SIR (see section on Disenfranchisement and Denationalisation)—and claimed that infiltrators were “stealing the rights of the country’s youth” and “grabbing the land of Adivasis.”
- Other state-level BJP chief ministers, cabinet ministers, and elected representatives deployed identical dehumanising rhetoric across multiple states during the period, in several cases escalating to explicit calls for violence:
- Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami was named India’s top hate speech offender of 2025 by India Hate Lab, which documented 71 anti-Muslim speeches by him during the year. On 27 January 2026, addressing a Republic Day event, Dhami publicly embraced the designation: “An American NGO has put me at number one for the most hate speeches… should there be illegal infiltration in Uttarakhand? Should there be forced conversion?… if I bring up these things and you call it hate speech then I accept it.” Throughout the period under review, Dhami continued to invoke other unfounded fabricated conspiracy theories—’love jihad’, ‘land jihad’, and ‘thook jihad’, the last a baseless claim that Muslims systematically contaminate food by spitting in it—reframing each as a legitimate governance concern.
West Bengal Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, widely expected to become the state’s next Chief Minister following the party’s election victory, used the campaign to threaten Muslim migrant workers from his constituency. At a rally in Nandigram on 14 April, he warned Muslim workers employed in BJP-ruled states—Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Odisha — to “mend your ways… so that there are no problems after May 4,” explicitly leveraging their economic dependence on states governed by his party. On 29 April, a polling day, when surrounded by opposition supporters at a Kolkata polling booth, he dismissed them as “all Bangladeshi Muslims.” In remarks made after the election results were announced, Adhikari credited the BJP’s landslide to a “Hindu consolidation” and claimed that 15 million ‘infiltrators’ were present on West Bengal’s electoral rolls.
Maharashtra BJP minister Nitesh Rane, speaking at a Ram Navami procession in Malvani, Mumbai, on 26 March—organised amid communal tensions over the installation of saffron flags near a mosque—threatened to “gouge out the eyes” of anyone who looked askance at the saffron flag, and “play marbles with them.” He declared that “this is a Hindu Rashtra—this is not anyone’s father’s Pakistan” and described madrasas as “centres for making terrorists.” A complaint was filed the following day; however, despite twelve prior FIRs against Rane in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region—five in 2024 alone—no case was registered for this event.
- T Raja Singh, a Telangana BJP MLA and serial hate speech offender whose 2022 party suspension was revoked ahead of state elections in 2023, delivered incendiary speeches across three states during the period. At a rally organised by the Bajrang Dal in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, on 16 February, he declared that “each of my Bajrangis could behead 10 Bangladeshis,” adding: “I have only one demand — there should be no case and no FIR.” At a gathering in Mandvi, Surat, on 8 March, he referred to Muslims as “insects” and “enemies,” praised bulldozer demolitions targeting Muslim properties, demanded that Muslims not be permitted to live near temples, and called on Prime Minister Modi to introduce a population control law targeting Muslims—proposing rewards for officials who sterilise the most ‘gol-topiwallas’, a derogatory term for Muslims referencing the Islamic prayer cap. On 4 April, he addressed a gathering in Biloli, Nanded district, Maharashtra, in defiance of a police notice explicitly prohibiting inflammatory statements and listing specific slurs he was forbidden from using. He nevertheless called for madrasas to be demolished with bulldozers, likening them to breeding grounds for terrorism. Police filed a case under India’s criminal procedure code, but made no arrest.
- Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami was named India’s top hate speech offender of 2025 by India Hate Lab, which documented 71 anti-Muslim speeches by him during the year. On 27 January 2026, addressing a Republic Day event, Dhami publicly embraced the designation: “An American NGO has put me at number one for the most hate speeches… should there be illegal infiltration in Uttarakhand? Should there be forced conversion?… if I bring up these things and you call it hate speech then I accept it.” Throughout the period under review, Dhami continued to invoke other unfounded fabricated conspiracy theories—’love jihad’, ‘land jihad’, and ‘thook jihad’, the last a baseless claim that Muslims systematically contaminate food by spitting in it—reframing each as a legitimate governance concern.
- Other high-profile Hindu nationalist figures with large public followings also continued to deliver inflammatory speeches targeting Muslims at public events during the period.
Yati Narsinghanand, a far-right monk based in Uttar Pradesh with a long record of incendiary anti-Muslim rhetoric and multiple active criminal cases against him, delivered speeches at gatherings across western UP in January 2026. At a meeting of a businessmen’s collective in Muzaffarnagar, he called for a complete economic and social boycott of Muslims, urged Hindus to arm themselves with guns and revolvers—even without licences—and declared that he would “eliminate Muslims from the earth.” He repeated his call on Hindus to form organisations modelled on the Taliban and ISIS. Days later, at a gathering in Baghpat, he described Islam as a “cancer on the earth” and reiterated his desire to form militant groups modelled on ISIS and the Taliban. No police action was reported in connection with either event.
Suresh Chavhanke, editor-in-chief of Sudarshan News, addressed multiple public rallies. At a gathering in Meerut in early February, he warned Hindus to “die and kill” to prevent what he termed ‘Islamicstan,’ invoking fabricated conspiracy theories including ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ and ‘love jihad,’ and repeating the slogan ‘batoge to katoge’—a phrase commonly used to warn Hindus that division will lead to their annihilation at Muslim hands. Later that month, at another rally in Faridabad, he called AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi a “virus” and fearmongered about Rohingya and Bangladeshi ‘infiltrators,’ calling for a boycott of Muslims. In separate remarks made in Yangon, he praised Myanmar for “eliminating its Muslim problem”—a reference to the military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, which the UN has described as bearing the hallmarks of genocide. In September 2025, the central Ministry of Education had approved a government-funded internship for 100 students at Sudarshan News, the television channel led by Chavhanke. - Grassroots campaigns of intimidation and communal hostility targeting Muslims in their everyday lives also continued across the country during the period. The following reported incidents are illustrative, and by no means exhaustive.
In Kotdwar, Uttarakhand, on 26 January—India’s Republic Day—members of the Bajrang Dal harassed an elderly Muslim shopkeeper over the name of his shop, insisting he remove the word “Baba” on the grounds that it had Hindu connotations. A local gym owner, Deepak Kumar, intervened and told the group that his own name was “Mohammad Deepak”—a gesture of solidarity with Muslims that was widely shared online. Rather than acting against the mob, police registered a criminal case against Kumar based on a complaint filed by the Hindutva activists. A man in Bihar subsequently posted a video announcing a bounty of ₹200,000 for Kumar’s killing; he was detained. On 20 March, the Uttarakhand High Court refused to quash the FIR against Kumar, dismissed his plea for police protection—ruling that a person under investigation “cannot pray for police protection”—and imposed a gag order restricting him from commenting on the case on social media.
Separately, in Bhonkera village, Uttar Pradesh, pamphlets left at the doorsteps of Muslim homes on 1 January warned residents to “vacate the village within 24 hours or be burned alive,” signed with Hindu supremacist slogans. The village’s roughly fifteen Muslim families, who have lived alongside a Hindu majority for six generations, reported that family members now take turns staying awake at night. An FIR was registered on 2 January against unidentified persons; no arrests have been made. In Raebareli, also in Uttar Pradesh, a public event in mid-January called for the “open genocide of Muslims and Christians”; an FIR against seven individuals was registered only on 27 January, a week later. In February, a YouTube channel with ties to local BJP leaders in Telangana targeted Muslim street vendors selling snacks at a tribal festival, accusing them of ‘food jihad’—a baseless conspiracy theory alleging that Muslims deliberately contaminate food sold to Hindus—and forcing one visibly distressed vendor to eat his own product on camera to “prove” it was safe. On 6 April, caged pigs were placed outside Muslim homes in Delhi’s Tri Nagar neighbourhood. - India’s mainstream media continued to play a central role in amplifying and normalising anti-Muslim narratives during the reporting period—both through active platforming and through conspicuous omission.
Multiple television channels, amplified by Maharashtra minister and BJP leader Nitesh Rane—who coined the term ‘corporate jihad’ and called for preferential hiring of Hindus—turned a workplace harassment case at a Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) BPO unit in Nashik, Maharashtra, into a communal conspiracy narrative centred on a Muslim woman who reportedly had nothing to do with the underlying allegations. Nine FIRs were filed in late March against TCS employees following allegations of sexual harassment and religious coercion against a male colleague. Nida Khan, a 26-year-old process associate with no managerial or recruitment role, was named in only one FIR—and only for allegedly making remarks about Hindu deities. Yet prime-time coverage recast her as the ‘mastermind’ and ‘kingpin’ of a purported conversion syndicate. A detailed examination by Alt News of all nine FIRs found that none of the claims broadcast on television—that Khan was an HR manager who suppressed complaints, facilitated sexual exploitation, and orchestrated a conversion racket—appeared in any police record. TCS itself clarified that Khan held no leadership or recruitment role and that its internal review had found no complaints of the nature alleged. A fact-finding team from the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) found no evidence of organised conversion and noted that the term ‘corporate jihad’ had emerged entirely from media commentary, not from any official record. Newslaundry separately reported that Hindu nationalist organisations had been involved from the case’s inception, with a local Shiv Sena leader acknowledging that Hindu groups had ‘counselled’ the first complainant for several days before accompanying her to file the FIR. Khan, who was pregnant, was suspended by TCS on 9 April; a Nashik sessions court denied her anticipatory bail on 2 May.
Separately, in March 2026, the India Today Conclave—one of the country’s most prominent annual media events—invited Laura Loomer, an American far-right activist who has publicly called Islam “a cancer on the world” and declared Islamophobia “a hoax,” as a featured speaker. At the 13–14 March event, Loomer offered a qualified apology for past anti-Indian remarks while recasting herself as a defender of Hindu rights— positioning her anti-Muslim rhetoric within a narrative of alleged persecution by Muslims. The decision to platform Loomer stood in stark contrast to the treatment of foreign academics and commentators critical of the Indian government: as Alt News documented, several prominent international scholars have been denied entry to India in recent years, while Loomer—whose views aligned with the ruling dispensation’s ideological commitments was welcomed.
A February 2026 analysis by Newslaundry also highlighted mainstream media’s systematic failure to report on communal targeting across multiple states, noting that attacks on Muslims in Uttarakhand, Odisha, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, and Mumbai had gone largely uncovered by major outlets. This pattern of complicity through omission—where the targeting of minorities is rendered invisible by editorial indifference—operates alongside the more visible amplification of anti-Muslim content documented elsewhere in this section. - Repeat hate speech offenders, at all levels, continued to evade accountability. Not one of the leaders whose speeches are documented in this section has faced criminal prosecution, disciplinary action, or meaningful institutional sanction of any kind.
On 16 February, the Supreme Court declined to entertain petitions seeking an investigation against Assam Chief Minister Sarma over his recent anti-Muslim remarks—highlighted above—directing petitioners instead to the Gauhati High Court. On 29 April, the Supreme Court dismissed a case against BJP leaders Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma—both documented extensively as having led chants of ‘desh ke gaddaro, goli maaro saalo ko’ (shoot dead the traitors to the nation) at public events weeks before communal violence in Delhi killed 53 people, mostly Muslims, in 2020; the Court remarked that the speeches disclosed no “cognizable offence” and were “not directed against any specific community.” On 13 March, a Delhi court dismissed a plea seeking an FIR against Kapil Mishra—another BJP leader whose public ultimatum in February 2020 is widely regarded as a proximate trigger for the same episode—ruling that registration of an FIR was “legally impermissible.”
In early May, Sarma was re-elected to power in Assam with a resounding majority. Thakur remains a Member of Parliament, while Verma and Mishra were both elevated in 2025 as cabinet ministers in the Delhi state government.
During the first four months of 2026, BJP-led central and state governments further intensified restrictions on the religious freedom of minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians. The period saw two states—Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh—enact new or significantly toughened anti-conversion laws, Gujarat pass a Uniform Civil Code that overrides Muslim personal law while exempting tribal communities, an escalation in the criminalisation of Muslim worship in Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and continuing selective demolitions of Muslim religious structures across multiple states.
The developments highlighted above raise serious concerns under international human rights law as well as domestic constitutional guarantees relating to religious freedom. The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion—including the freedom to manifest one’s religion in worship, observance, practice, and teaching—is protected under Article 18 of the ICCPR, to which India is a party. Any limitations on this right must be prescribed by law and necessary for the protection of public safety, order, health, morals, or the fundamental rights of others; they must not be applied in a discriminatory manner. The systematic pattern of legislative restrictions, criminalisation of worship, and selective demolitions documented above appears to fall well outside these permissible limitations.
During the period under review, BJP-governed state authorities continued to discriminate against Muslims in access to housing, education, and cultural life. This included continuing arbitrary and punitive demolitions and forced evictions targeting Muslim communities across multiple states—including explicitly retaliatory demolitions following communal incidents—in defiance of the Supreme Court’s November 2024 guidelines; the legal entrenchment of residential segregation through new legislation in Rajasthan and expanded powers in Gujarat restricting Muslim property ownership; an intensified crackdown on Muslim educational institutions, including the abolition of Uttarakhand’s Madrasa Board, counter-terrorism scrutiny of approximately 4,000 madrassas in Uttar Pradesh, and the seizure of nearly 300 schools in Jammu and Kashmir; and continuing discrimination against Muslim students in educational institutions across multiple states, including religious segregation in classrooms, restrictions on religious observance, and the use of communal slurs by teachers.
Multiple international assessments published during the reporting period registered India’s continued democratic decline. The V-Dem Democracy Report 2026 classified India as an “electoral autocracy“—a designation it has held since 2017—ranking it 105 out of 179 on the Liberal Democracy Index, down five places from the previous year. Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2026 scored India 62 out of 100 (“Partly Free”), a 14-point decline since 2005. The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index dropped India six places to 157 out of 180 in the “very serious” category. CIVICUS retained India’s “Repressed” rating (30/100) in its January 2026 update. These assessments capture trends through 2025. The more recent developments listed below suggest the trajectory has not reversed:
- Continuing targeting of journalists: India’s RSF ranking of 157/180 was driven in part by intensifying harassment of independent media. During the period, police in Srinagar summoned at least two Kashmir-based journalists to the Cyber Police Station in mid-January in connection with routine reporting on a police exercise to profile mosques, and attempted to compel one of them to sign a “peace bond“; the Magistrate rejected the request. In West Bengal, at least four journalists were assaulted by mobs while covering protests in Murshidabad district on 16–17 January, including a cameraman hospitalised with head injuries; another journalist was assaulted on camera in Howrah on 25 February after questioning a ruling-party (TMC) lawmaker.
- Escalating restrictions on digital expression and online censorship: On 10 February, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified amended IT Intermediary Rules effective 20 February, imposing a three-hour takedown window on social media platforms for content deemed unlawful—a timeframe the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital rights watchdog, called incompatible with proportionality requirements. On 31 March, MeitY published draft Second Amendment Rules extending the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s content-oversight powers from registered publishers to ordinary users posting “news and current affairs” content. In parallel, a MediaNama investigation documented over 40 instances of geo-blocking, account withholding, or content takedowns on X (formerly Twitter) in March 2026 alone—targeting journalists, satirists, fact-checkers, and ordinary users critical of the Prime Minister. X wrote to MeitY on 19 March stating that blocking orders were “excessively and disproportionately” restricting users’ rights; MeitY responded that content “demeaning” the Prime Minister “without any substance” posed a threat to public order. The US Trade Representative’s 2026 National Trade Estimate Report separately flagged India’s takedown protocols as “politically motivated.” Access Now’s annual report, released 31 March, recorded 65 internet shutdowns in India in 2025—the highest among democracies. Within the current reporting period, shutdowns were reportedly imposed in Kokrajhar, Assam (20 January), five districts of Manipur (7–14 April), and Ramban, Jammu and Kashmir (13 April).
- Continuing restrictions on civil society, protest, and association: On 25 March, the government introduced the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 in the lower house of Parliament, which would empower a new “Designated Authority” to seize and dispose of the assets of non-governmental organisations whose foreign-funding licences are cancelled—with retrospective effect. Amnesty International noted that 21,933 organisations had already lost their FCRA licences as of March 2026. On 26 February, Delhi Police lathi-charged students of Jawaharlal Nehru University attempting to march to the Ministry of Education; around 51 were detained and 14 arrested, including the elected student union president and joint secretary, before a local court ordered their release. In Noida, Uttar Pradesh, thousands of factory workers protested wage conditions from 10–14 April; police responded with tear gas and lathi-charges, arrested approximately 400, and detained trade union leaders. In Odisha’s Rayagada district, police conducted a pre-dawn raid on Adivasi and Dalit villagers opposing a Vedanta bauxite mining project on 7 April—cutting electricity, carrying out lathi-charges, and injuring approximately 70 people; at least 40 were arrested, with courts ordering at least eight to clean police stations as a bail condition in what activists described as a casteist judicial response. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk was released on 15 March after six months of National Security Act detention over his participation in protests calling for statehood (within the Indian Union) for Ladakh.
- Restrictions on academic and cultural expression: On 25 February, the Supreme Court ordered the nationwide seizure of all physical and digital copies of a newly published Class 8 social science textbook by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT, a government body), citing a chapter on judicial corruption as a “deep-rooted conspiracy to malign the judiciary.” The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC, India’s film censorship authority) blocked the release of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Voice of Hind Rajab—on the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces—with the distributor apparently told by a Board member that the film’s release “would break up the India-Israel relationship.”
- Rollback of transgender rights: Parliament passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 on 25 March, receiving presidential assent on 30 March. The legislation strips the right to self-identification of gender— previously recognised by the Supreme Court in a 2014—restricts the definition of “transgender” to three narrow categories, and mandates verification by state medical boards before identity certificates can be issued. It further introduces penalties of up to life imprisonment for “coercing or alluring” a person to assume a transgender identity, which the People’s Union for Civil Liberties warned could criminalise support systems of transgender persons. Amnesty International called it “a major step backward for human rights”; Human Rights Watch described it as “a huge setback” that “strips thousands of their rights.” The OHCHR warned that the legislation would have “far-reaching impacts.”
The violations documented across this edition reveal a pattern of remedy failure that is structural rather than incidental. At every stage of the accountability process—from initial access to justice through to independent oversight—Muslim victims confronted barriers that rendered domestic remedies largely ineffective. Complaints were refused, distorted, or turned against the victims themselves. Investigations were conducted by the same agencies implicated in the violations. Courts delivered moments of institutional courage at the lower levels, only for these to be undermined by transfers, executive defiance, or retreat at the apex. Reparation—including for those wrongfully expelled from the country, dispossessed of their homes, or subjected to years of pre-trial detention—remained largely absent. And the oversight bodies tasked with monitoring compliance either failed to act or actively pursued agendas unrelated to their mandate. The reporting period also brought fresh developments in cases arising from the targeted violence against Muslims in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 and in Delhi in 2020 that underscore the continuing absence of remedy for past violations.
The following assessment is organised around the five core elements of the right to effective remedy under international law:
- Access to justice: Effective remedy begins with the ability to file a complaint and have it acted upon without discrimination, intimidation, or inversion. Across the incidents documented in this edition, Muslim victims repeatedly encountered a system in which the first point of contact—the police station—functioned not as a gateway to justice but as a barrier to it.
In multiple cases, first information reports (FIRs) either omitted the core offence or were filed against the victims rather than the perpetrators. In the Balasore cow vigilante lynching (14 January), when a 35-year-old Muslim man was beaten to death by cow vigilantes who forced him to chant Hindu slogans before killing him, the initial FIR booked the van’s driver and owner under Odisha’s cow slaughter prevention law and described the incident as a vehicle overturning—making no mention of the mob attack that killed the victim. A murder FIR was registered only after the victim’s family filed a separate complaint. (See section on Deprivation of Life.) Similarly, in Dhenkanal, Odisha (4 January), where a Christian pastor was assaulted, forced to consume cow dung, and paraded while forced to chant Hindu slogans, police filed the FIR against the pastor rather than his attackers; nine suspects were arrested only after more than two weeks. (See section on Torture and Ill-Treatment.)
In other cases, victims who attempted to access the system faced active criminalisation. In Uttarakhand, a Hindu man who expressed solidarity with Muslims after a mob attack by Hindu extremists was himself targeted: police registered a case against him based on the mob’s complaint, and the High Court refused to quash the FIR (20 March), denied him police protection, and imposed a social media gag order—while the man who announced a ₹2 lakh (~$2,400) bounty for his killing was detained but not prosecuted. (See section on Advocacy of Religious Hatred.)
The forced expulsion campaign active in Assam provided another example of brazen denial of access to justice. In a May 2026 interview, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma described the methods followed by authorities openly: the Border Security Force holds individuals for 10 to 40 days, identifies border stretches where Bangladeshi guards are absent, and ‘pushes’ them across at night. No individualised assessment of nationality, legal representation, or opportunity to challenge the expulsion is available at any stage—over a hundred Indian citizens, including a 14-member family from Odisha holding Aadhaar and voter cards, were pushed across the border multiple times under this system. (See section on Forced Expulsions and Refoulement.)
A four-part study published by Article 14 in February 2026 documented the weaponisation of India’s anti-terror law (UAPA) against Muslims in Karnataka. Of 925 persons accused under UAPA in the state over two decades, 783—nearly 85 per cent—were Muslim. Nearly eight in ten were charged during the BJP’s 10.5 years in power. The law’s bail provisions effectively invert the presumption of innocence, requiring the accused to disprove the state’s case rather than the state proving it—rendering access to justice illusory from the moment of arrest.
- Effective, impartial investigations: The right to remedy requires that investigations into alleged violations be conducted promptly, independently, and impartially. Where the agency under investigation is the same agency conducting the inquiry—or where police have institutional incentives to minimise wrongdoing—the investigation ceases to function as a pathway to accountability and instead becomes a mechanism for its avoidance.
In several cases documented in this edition, police were left to investigate deaths for which they bore direct or indirect responsibility. In Delhi, a 34-year-old Muslim man died in police custody at Jahangirpuri police station (20 April); police attributed the death to dehydration, while his family alleged he had been beaten to death. No independent or judicial investigation was initiated. In Ganderbal, Kashmir (1 April), a 28-year-old man was killed in an army operation described as an ‘encounter’; his family insisted he was a civilian with no militant links and demanded an independent probe—none was ordered. (See sections on Deprivation of Life and Torture and Ill-Treatment.)
Where police were not themselves the perpetrators, their investigations nonetheless operated to shield those responsible. In Bhiwadi, Rajasthan (2 March), a young Muslim man was shot dead by cow vigilantes; police initially attributed the death to stone-pelting, a claim contradicted when the post-mortem recovered a bullet from the victim’s head. No arrests were made for 14 days—the family itself traced the accused. In Jharkhand (15 January), police recorded the death of Alauddin Sheikh as a suspected suicide by hanging; the family alleged murder and staging of the scene. No indication emerged that police meaningfully pursued the family’s account.
The consequences of such investigative failures were visible in the courtroom. During the reporting period, a Delhi court acquitted 11 Hindu men charged in connection with the targeted violence against Muslims in Delhi in 2020, finding the police chargesheet “fabricated” and the investigation fundamentally deficient. In a separate set of cases, courts acquitted a further 19 accused across three cases—including 37 acquitted in Muzaffarnagar after 13 years and 17 acquitted in a 2023 Chhattisgarh mob lynching—with courts repeatedly citing the prosecution’s failure to present evidence. In each instance, the acquittal likely reflected not the innocence of the accused but the refusal of investigating agencies to build a case against them.
The pattern extended to active police complicity with perpetrators. In Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh (8 March), a 60-year-old Muslim man reported a dispute with Hindu neighbours who had a history of provoking his family; police instead detained him, allegedly accepted bribes from the accused’s side, and beat him in custody. He was shot dead by the accused shortly after his release. In Rohtas, Bihar (24 March), Hasan Raza Khan was lynched in public view on video; despite this evidence, only four of eight accused were arrested. The family reported threats from those at large, and the person who recorded the video was also threatened. Khan’s wife subsequently consumed poison along with their two children and died. (See sections on Deprivation of Life and Torture and Ill-Treatment.) - Fair, independent prosecutions and judicial processes: The right to remedy depends not only on the investigation that precedes a trial but on the independence and fairness of the judicial process itself. During the reporting period, lower courts in several states demonstrated institutional courage—only for these interventions to be neutralised by transfers, executive defiance, appellate retreat, or the Supreme Court’s own refusal to engage.
The most sustained judicial pushback came from judges at the Allahabad High Court, which has jurisdiction over Uttar Pradesh. In January 2026, Justice Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal issued strict guidelines against Uttar Pradesh’s ‘encounter culture’—the practice, colloquially known as ‘half encounters’ or ‘Operation Langda,’ of police shooting accused persons in the leg to earn promotions—making FIR registration mandatory after every encounter, prohibiting instant rewards, and threatening district police chiefs with contempt if Supreme Court guidelines were violated. In February, another bench comprising Justices Atul Sreedharan and Siddharth Nandan flagged the continuation of ‘bulldozer justice’ despite Supreme Court guidelines, questioning whether demolishing structures immediately after alleged offences constituted a ‘colourable exercise of executive discretion.’ Another judge, Justice Subhash Vidyarthi, struck down the closure of an unrecognised madrassa, ruling that non-recognition does not authorise closure. In a split verdict, Justice Sreedharan openly called out the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)’s silence on lynching cases as a dereliction of its mandate. In Sambhal, a Chief Judicial Magistrate ordered the police to register an FIR against Circle Officer Anuj Chaudhary—personally named by a witness as having shot at Muslim protesters during the November 2024 mosque survey violence that left five dead—and other police personnel.
These interventions were systematically neutralised. The Sambhal CJM was transferred out of the district within days of his order, followed by another bench of the Allahabad High Court staying his FIR direction. Chaudhary himself was promoted to Additional Superintendent of Police late last year.
At the apex, the Supreme Court retreated from accountability for anti-Muslim hate speech. On 16 February, a bench led by CJI Surya Kant declined to entertain petitions seeking an SIT probe into Assam CM Sarma’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, directing petitioners to the Gauhati High Court instead. On 29 April, the Court dismissed the case against former Union Minister Anurag Thakur and BJP leader Parvesh Verma over their 2020 rally chant of “desh ke gaddaron ko… goli maaro saalon ko” (shoot dead the traitors to the nation)—holding it disclosed no cognizable offence. The Court also dismissed an application seeking the implementation of its own Tehseen Poonawala hate crime prevention framework as involving “unmanageable” directions, effectively abandoning its own previous initiatives. And in perhaps its most consequential act of judicial inaction, the Court left its judgment in ADR v ECI—the challenge to the mass voter roll purges heard over 29 days and reserved in January 2026—undelivered, as four states—including West Bengal—and one Union Territory went to polls on purged rolls. (See sections on Advocacy of Religious Hatred and Disenfranchisement and Denationalisation.)
The pattern of impunity for the 2020 targeted violence against Muslims in Delhi crystallised across every level of the judiciary. On 13 March, a Delhi magistrate ruled it “legally impermissible” to register an FIR against BJP leader Kapil Mishra—now Delhi’s tourism minister—for his role in inciting the violence. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on 5 January denied bail to student leaders Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam (both now detained over five years under UAPA), holding their continued detention “not yet constitutionally impermissible” and barring them from reapplying for one year. Seven accused remain in jail—while, as documented in the preceding section, perpetrators of the same violence were acquitted after police submitted fabricated chargesheets. The inciter is a minister; the accused who shot people walk free; the Muslim activists falsely accused of ‘conspiracy’ remain locked up. (See section on Arrests and Detentions.) - Adequate reparation: Under international law, victims of human rights violations are entitled to restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, and guarantees of non-repetition. For the violations documented in this edition, reparation was almost entirely absent—and in several cases, the state actively obstructed victims’ attempts to recover what had been taken from them.
The wrongful expulsion of Indian citizens into Bangladesh represented a stark example of continued denial of restitution. As documented in the section on Forced Expulsions, the state’s pushback pipeline offered no mechanism for their return. In a report published in January, Taher Ali, declared a ‘foreigner’ by an Assam tribunal, described how he was pushed into Bangladesh three times—Bangladesh returned him each time, but no Indian authority took accountability for the wrongful expulsion or offered compensation. A 14-member family from Odisha was pushed across four times despite holding citizenship documents; the BSF reportedly threatened to “open fire” if they returned. Sunali Khatun, a pregnant woman whose family held land records going back five generations and whose parents appeared on electoral rolls since 2002, required Supreme Court intervention merely to return—no accountability for the wrongful expulsion has followed. Most strikingly, six persons from Birbhum whom a Bangladeshi court itself declared to be Indian citizens remained stranded in Bangladesh as of April 2026: the central government challenged the Calcutta High Court’s repatriation order in the Supreme Court rather than comply, actively litigating against its own citizens’ right to return. The Supreme Court gave the Centre a “last chance” to clarify its position on 24 April—but no resolution was reached during the reporting period.
In Manipur, the total absence of reparation for mass violence against the Kuki-Zo community entered its third year. Despite over 260 people killed and more than 58,000 displaced since May 2023, no conviction has been secured for any conflict-related offence. In the case relating to two Kuki-Zo women who were stripped, paraded naked, and sexually assaulted by a Meitei mob—and a video of the incident went viral—a special CBI court framed charges only in January 2026, two and a half years after the crime; two of the accused had been released on bail, prompting the CBI itself to petition the Supreme Court for cancellation. In a separate case, a Kuki-Zo woman who was abducted and gang-raped during the May 2023 violence died in January 2026 without a single perpetrator having been identified, let alone prosecuted.
The only documented instance of judicial compensation during the reporting period was a Patna High Court order awarding ₹5 lakh (~ USD 5200) to a Muslim minor from Saharsa, Bihar, who had been unlawfully detained for over two months—a sum that, while welcome, underscores how exceptional any form of reparation remains. - Independent oversight: The right to effective remedy presupposes the existence of independent oversight bodies capable of monitoring state compliance and intervening where violations occur. India’s NHRC—a key body mandated to perform this function—demonstrated during the reporting period not merely a failure to act but an active misalignment between its priorities and the patterns of violations documented in this report.
The Allahabad High Court’s split verdict noted earlier arose from a petition challenging an NHRC directive ordering the Economic Offences Wing to investigate 558 government-aided madrasas in Uttar Pradesh. While hearing the challenge, Justice Sreedharan observed that he was “astounded” by the Commission’s decision to pursue madrassa finances while the same body had never taken suo motu cognisance of the lynching of Muslims, the harassment of interfaith couples, or the persecution of those who “even having a cup of coffee at a public place with a person of different religion becomes a fearful act.” The NHRC’s selective attention extended further: Commission member Priyank Kanoongo—a former chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, with a documented RSS and BJP background—was simultaneously issuing sweeping notices to gymnasiums across multiple states based on the ‘love jihad’ conspiracy narrative, investigating whether Muslim gym owners were luring Hindu women. The contrast is instructive: an oversight body that finds no occasion to act on lynching, custodial death, or forced expulsion is now devoting institutional resources to investigate an unfounded, debunked Islamophobic conspiracy theory.
The NHRC’s credibility deficit is now the subject of formal international proceedings. In April 2025, GANHRI’s Sub-Committee on Accreditation (SCA) recommended downgrading the NHRC’s accreditation from ‘A’ to ‘B’ status—finding it only partially compliant with the Paris Principles. The NHRC challenged the recommendation; in December 2025, the GANHRI Bureau rejected the challenge and referred the Commission back to the SCA for review. The final decision on whether to formally downgrade India’s national human rights institution—a step that would restrict its participation in UN Human Rights Council proceedings—was originally scheduled for April 2026 but has been deferred to November 2026 to allow the NHRC additional time to demonstrate compliance.
The reporting period also provided further confirmation that impunity in India does not merely denote the absence of punishment, but also often functions as a pathway to political reward and recognition:
- On 5 March, the Rajasthan High Court granted bail to Monu Manesar—a cow vigilante leader accused of conspiracy in the abduction and murder of Nasir (25) and Junaid (35) from Bharatpur, Rajasthan, whose charred bodies were recovered from inside a burnt vehicle in Bhiwani, Haryana in February 2023—noting that not one of 74 prosecution witnesses had been examined in over two years. Upon release, Manesar was escorted home in a bulletproof jacket to garlands, drum beats, and firecrackers by supporters.
- In Jalna, Maharashtra, Shrikant Pangarkar—an accused in the 2017 assassination of journalist Gauri Lankesh, released on bail in September 2024—won a municipal corporation election on 16 January; the ruling Shiv Sena—a BJP ally—did not field a candidate against him.
- The trajectory from violence to political office is perhaps most brazen in Delhi: Kapil Mishra, whose ultimatum preceded the 2020 targeted violence against Muslims that killed 53 people—and against whom in March a court ruled it “legally impermissible” to register an FIR—now serves as Delhi’s cabinet minister for tourism, art, culture, and law; Parvesh Verma, whose “goli maaro saalon ko” (shoot the traitors) chants the Supreme Court in April found disclosed no cognisable offence, is now Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister, while Anurag Thakur, another accused in the same case, remains a Member of Parliament.
In their report examining alleged violations of international law against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh and Assam, published in March 2026, the Panel of Independent International Experts (PIIE)—a group of prominent jurists and investigators—had concluded that “in both states, the remedial framework appears to be largely ineffective for Muslims, particularly in relation to serious violations, and individuals affected have no realistic prospect of securing justice through existing domestic mechanisms.” The evidence documented across this edition suggests that this conclusion increasingly applies nationally.