Hindu youths subjected to religious discrimination as gym operator cancels memberships and denies entry on basis of Hindu identity

Case ID : 30a7497 | Location : Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 18 March, 2026

Case ID : 30a7497

Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, India

18 March, 2026

Hindu youths subjected to religious discrimination as gym operator cancels memberships and denies entry on basis of Hindu identity

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

Nine Hindu youths in Khurja, Bulandshahr district, Uttar Pradesh, were subjected to religious discrimination by the operator of JS Fitness Gym in Mohalla Phoota Darwaza, who cancelled their gym memberships and denied them entry to the facility because of their religious identity. One of the affected Hindu youths, Abhishek Verma, stated that the gym operator was giving preferential access to members of the Muslim community, whilst targeting him and 8 other Hindus, denying them access. The incident triggered a large public protest outside the gym, with an angry crowd gathering and demanding its immediate closure. Khurja police arrived at the scene and brought the situation under control. Abhishek Verma confirmed that the operator of JS Fitness Gym in Mohalla Phoota Darwaza, Khurja, cancelled the memberships of nine Hindu youths and denied them entry to the gym facility. He and eight other Hindu individuals who trained together at the gym were told that their memberships were being cancelled. Abhishek Verma further stated that the denial of entry was connected to a previous complaint he had filed against the gym operator, and that the operator retaliated against him and his fellow Hindu gym members by cancelling their memberships in response to the earlier complaint. The gym operator gave preferential access and priority to members of a particular community while systematically excluding the nine Hindu youths from the facility through the cancellation of their memberships. Upon learning of the incident, an angry crowd gathered outside JS Fitness Gym and raised slogans, demanding the gym's immediate closure. The crowd's protest created a tense atmosphere in the surrounding area. Upon receiving information about the situation, Khurja police arrived at the scene, pacified the crowd, evacuated the gym premises, and brought the situation under control, dispersing the protesters after speaking with them. Khurja Kotwali in-charge, Dharmendra Singh, confirmed that the police were investigating the matter and that appropriate legal action would be taken in accordance with the law upon completion of the investigation.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Attack not resulting in death". The sub-category here is "Attacked for Hindu identity". In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. This case qualified as a hate crime on the basis that nine Hindu youths were systematically excluded from a public facility whilst members of the Muslim community were given preferential access, reflecting a conscious and calculated act of religiously motivated discrimination in which Hindu religious identity served as the specific and determining criterion for exclusion. Membership in a public facility is a basic right available to all individuals regardless of their religious identity. By targeting nine Hindu youths collectively and simultaneously for exclusion whilst extending preferential access to members of the Muslim community, the gym operator transformed a public facility into a communally segregated space in which Hindu individuals were treated as unwelcome solely on the basis of their faith. The collective and simultaneous nature of the cancellations confirmed that the exclusion was directed at the group's shared Hindu identity rather than any individual or personal grievance. The retaliatory dimension of the cancellations further confirmed the religiously motivated nature of the discrimination. By extending punishment beyond Abhishek Verma alone to all eight of his fellow Hindu gym members, the gym operator made clear that the retaliation was directed not at an individual complaint but at the Hindu identity of the group as a whole. The public response to the incident, with an angry crowd gathering outside the gym and demanding its immediate closure, reflected the broader Hindu community's recognition that the operator's conduct was a deliberate, public act of communal discrimination rather than a private commercial dispute. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia tracker.