Policy of inhuman hatred: At least 13 Muslims killed in India Modi’s Islamophobia on rise

At least 13 Muslims, including women, children and elderly people, were killed in religiously motivated hate crimes across India during the first four months of 2026, according to new data released by the India Persecution Tracker, a monitoring project run by the South Asia Justice Campaign.

The report documents a sharp rise in anti-Muslim violence, hate speech, police abuses and criminalization of Islamic religious practices across several Indian states under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Muslim Network TV writes in its article as cited by Caliber.Az.

According to the tracker, the victims included two women, a 15-year-old boy and a 65-year-old man. One additional death involved the suicide of the wife of a lynching victim.

The highest number of fatalities was recorded in Bihar, followed by Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state governed by Hindu nationalist leader Yogi Adityanath.

The tracker also documented at least four killings by state actors during the same period. Among them were two Muslim brothers killed in separate police “encounters” in Uttar Pradesh within 48 hours of each other, days after Adityanath publicly ordered “strict action” in the case linked to their pursuit.

In Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim man was killed by the Indian Army in what authorities described as an “encounter,” while in Delhi, another Muslim man died in police custody amid allegations of torture.

The report said authorities increasingly criminalized ordinary expressions of Muslim faith, particularly during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

More than 40 Muslims were arrested over religious practices and public displays of faith, including 12 men detained in Uttar Pradesh after offering Friday prayers inside a vacant house when videos of the gathering circulated online.

In another case during Ramadan, 14 Muslim youths were arrested after breaking their fast aboard a boat on the Ganges River following complaints by a BJP politician who accused them of consuming chicken biryani and throwing leftovers into the river.

The report also linked anti-Muslim rhetoric to wider political campaigns ahead of elections. It alleged that more than 56 million voters were removed from electoral rolls across 13 states through a controversial voter verification exercise known as the Special Intensive Revision, with Muslims disproportionately affected.

According to the tracker, Muslims accounted for 34 percent of voter deletions in West Bengal, while in some constituencies the exclusion rate reportedly reached 95%.

The report further documented repeated use of anti-Muslim rhetoric by senior BJP leaders. Modi reportedly used the term “ghuspaithiya,” meaning infiltrator, in multiple speeches between January and February at election rallies, parliamentary speeches and party events.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah also delivered speeches linking voter roll purges to threats of physical removal, according to the tracker.

The report highlighted remarks by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who allegedly stated publicly that the voter revision process “targets only Bengali-speaking Muslims” and was intended to “give them trouble.”

It also referenced an AI-generated video shared by the BJP’s Assam social media account that depicted Sarma shooting Muslims at point-blank range alongside slogans such as “foreigner-free Assam.”

Separately, investigative outlet Bellingcat found that nearly two in five BJP social media posts analyzed in Assam and West Bengal matched the United Nations’ definition of hate speech, with Bengali-origin Muslims frequently portrayed as “infiltrators.”

The India Persecution Tracker said many Muslim victims faced institutional barriers when seeking justice, alleging that police frequently failed to properly register complaints or instead filed cases against victims themselves.

In February, U.N. special rapporteurs on torture and extrajudicial executions warned of “systemic” policing failures in India and raised concerns over what they described as excessive and often lethal use of force disproportionately affecting Muslims, Dalits and Indigenous Adivasi communities.