By Mohamed Atherulla Shariff
A new report by the India Persecution Tracker (IPT) has alleged a sharp rise in violence, custodial abuse and criminalisation targeting Muslims across India during the first four months of 2026, documenting at least 13 killings in communal hate crimes across eight states.
The report, compiled by the South Asia Justice Campaign, paints a grim picture of increasing hostility, systemic discrimination and alleged impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of anti-Muslim violence.
According to the findings, those killed included two women, an elderly man and a child. Bihar recorded the highest number of deaths, with four murders and one suicide linked to communal violence, followed by Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.
The tracker also documented the suicide of the wife of a gang-rape survivor, linking it to the trauma and lack of justice faced by victims’ families.
The report alleged that Hindutva extremist groups were responsible for many of the attacks and warned that hate crimes against Muslims are becoming increasingly normalised in several parts of the country.
Alongside mob violence, the report raised serious concerns about the conduct of state agencies. It alleged that at least four Muslims were killed by government officials during the same period.
Among the cases highlighted were the deaths of two Muslim brothers in a police encounter in Uttar Pradesh. The killings reportedly occurred shortly after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath called for tough action in one of the related cases.
In Jammu and Kashmir, the report alleged that a Muslim civilian was killed by the Indian Army in what it described as a ‘controversial encounter’. In Delhi, another Muslim man allegedly died in police custody following torture.
The IPT argued that custodial torture of Muslims continues because of systemic bias, the absence of a standalone anti-torture law and what it called near-total impunity for state actors.
The report further alleged that Muslims detained by police are often subjected to identity-based violence, forced confessions and denial of legal safeguards.
A major section of the report focused on what it described as the ‘criminalisation of religious practices’. It claimed that peaceful Islamic practices, including prayer gatherings and Ramadan observances, increasingly attracted police action.
In Uttar Pradesh’s Mohammad Ganj village, 12 Muslims were arrested for offering Friday prayers in an empty house. During Ramadan, 14 Muslim youths were arrested while breaking their fast on a boat in the Ganges after a complaint by a local BJP leader accused them of throwing leftover food into the river.
The tracker said that more than 40 Muslims were arrested during Ramadan and other religious observances in different parts of the country.
The report also alleged that largescale voter list revisions disproportionately affected Muslims. It claimed that more than 5.6 crore voters had been removed from electoral rolls in 13 states under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
According to the IPT, Muslims were among the worst affected communities. In West Bengal, the report alleged that 34 per cent of the deleted names belonged to Muslims, while in some constituencies the figure allegedly rose as high as 95 per cent.
The report also expressed concern over what it described as escalating hate speech by political leaders. It alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ in at least six speeches between January and February 2026. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was also accused of making speeches portraying voter list revisions as a step toward the ‘physical expulsion’ of Muslims.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was quoted in the report as saying that voter list revisions specifically targeted Bengali-speaking Muslims.
The tracker further cited an AI-generated video shared from the official Assam BJP social media account on Feb. 7, allegedly showing Sharma firing at Muslims with captions such as ‘Foreigner-free Assam’ and ‘Why didn’t you go to Pakistan?’
The report referenced findings by digital analysis group Bellingcat, which reportedly examined BJP social media posts from Assam and West Bengal and concluded that two out of every five posts matched the United Nations definition of hate speech.
The IPT also accused police authorities of obstructing justice for Muslim victims by omitting key allegations in FIRs or filing cases against victims themselves. It cited warnings issued in February by United Nations special rapporteurs, who said India’s policing system was ‘systematically failing’, particularly in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Assam, where Muslims, Dalits and tribal communities allegedly faced excessive and lethal force.
