Hindu community threatened with forced circumcision, violent attacks and expulsion by Bangladeshi Muslim men who also abused Hindu deities
Bangladesh 
29 August, 2026
Case Summary
Hindu community was threatened with violence by three Bangladeshi Muslim men, who also made derogatory remarks about Hindu deities. On 30 August 2026, an undated video from Bangladesh went viral on social media, showing three Bangladeshi Muslim men issuing violent threats against the Hindu minority community. In the video, the Muslim men threatened Hindus with forced circumcision and violence, declaring, “Wherever you see a Hindu, instantly circumcise them then and there.” One of the men also threatened the Bangladeshi Hindu community "I will hit you with a machete" and used abusive language against Hindus. The men further invoked Maa Kali and Dhakeshwari, making threatening and derogatory remarks concerning Hindu religious figures and places of worship, and told Hindus to leave Bangladesh. The video therefore contained explicit threats of physical violence, forced religious humiliation and intimidation directed at Hindus on the basis of their religious identity. The video was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the handle Avro Neel HinduNamaste, a resident of Bangladesh and a Sanatani online activist who considered it his moral duty to highlight incidents of persecution of Sanatanis in the country. The escalation of anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh has unfolded in three distinct phases: first, following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina's government in August 2024; second, after the death of Sharif Osman Bin Hadi in December 2025; and third, in the aftermath of the 13th National Parliamentary Election in 2026. During these periods, multiple incidents involving attacks on Hindu temples, homes, businesses, and religious gatherings were reported across the country. Following the removal of Sheikh Hasina's government, reports documented attacks on Hindu homes, temples, and religious institutions, alongside intimidation campaigns, arson, vandalism, and mob violence targeting minority communities. The Hinduphobia Tracker has documented 336 incidents of anti-Hindu violence during this period, highlighting the scale and persistence of hostility faced by the Hindu minority. A further escalation followed the death of Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, after which Hindu communities were blamed and targeted in retaliatory attacks. Hindu homes were selectively set ablaze, places of worship were attacked, and families were displaced in several districts. The Hinduphobia Tracker documented 51 incidents of anti-Hindu violence during this phase alone, reflecting the continued vulnerability of the community amid rising communal tensions. The third wave of violence emerged following the 13th National Parliamentary Election in 2026. Within days of the declaration of results, reports from several districts described coordinated incidents involving arson, looting, assaults, vandalism of Hindu temples, and attacks on Hindu homes. Seen in the context of the continuing pattern of anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh, the coercive conversion and marriage of a minor Hindu girl reflected the broader climate of hostility and intimidation faced by the Hindu minority in the country.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Hate speech against Hindus. Within it, the sub-category selected here is - Violent threats. Violent threats, explicit, implicit or implied, is the most dangerous form of hate speech since it goes beyond discriminatory and prejudicial language to express the intent of causing harm to an individual or a group of people based on their religious identity and faith. There could be several different kinds of threats that are issued to Hindus based on religious animosity. An explicit threat would mean the direct threat of violence towards an individual Hindu, a group of Hindus or Hindus at large. Physical violence, death threats, threats of destruction of property belonging to Hindus and threats of genocide would mean explicit threats against Hindus for their religious identity. Implicit threats may not be a direct threat but implied through the use of symbols of actions – for example – in the Nupur Sharma case, other than explicit threats, there were also implicit threats when Islamists took to the streets to burn and beat her effigies. It implies that they want to do the same to Nupur Sharma – thereby is considered an implicit threat. Violent threats can be delivered in person, through letters, phone calls, graffiti, or increasingly through social media and other online platforms. It would be important to understand that a threat – explicit or implicit, online or offline – to an individual who happens to be a Hindu does not qualify as a religiously motivated threat. Such a threat, while vile and dangerous, could be owing to non-religious reasons and/or personal animosity. To qualify as a religiously motivated threat, it would need to exhibit an indication that the individual is being targeted for religious reasons and/or owing to his/her religious identity as a Hindu. The other sub-category selected here is - Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem out of inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith, therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. The incident constituted a hate crime because the threats were directed at Hindus specifically on account of their religious identity, rather than at particular individuals because of a personal dispute or other non-religious reason. The language used in the video explicitly singled out Hindus as a religious community and attached threats of physical harm, brutal violence, religious humiliation and expulsion from the Muslim majority country, Bangladesh, because of their religious identity. The reference to forcibly circumcising Hindus was particularly significant because it presented a religiously specific form of bodily violation as something that should be inflicted upon Hindus simply because they were Hindu. This transformed a religious distinction into a basis for threatened violence and humiliation, while the demand that Hindus leave Bangladesh further demonstrated that the hostility was directed at their presence as members of a particular religious community. The threat of forced circumcision constituted a particularly grave form of religiously motivated intimidation because it invoked a bodily act that carries specific religious significance in Islam and threatened to impose it upon Hindus against their will. This gave the threat an implicit coercive-conversion dimension: forced circumcision was presented as a means of stripping Hindus of an aspect of their existing religious identity and subjecting them to forced conversion. The significance therefore lay not merely in the threatened physical injury, but in the use of a religiously significant bodily act as a tool of domination, humiliation and potential religious coercion against Hindus. The threat consequently demonstrated that the hostility was directed at Hindu victims precisely because of their religious identity and sought to intimidate them through both physical violence and the threatened imposition of a religiously significant practice. The explicit threat to commit violence against the Hindu community with a machete further established the religious motive behind the threatened violence. Although this statement was not, by itself, accompanied by a separate call for violence against a specific individual, it was explicitly directed at the Hindu community, leaving little ambiguity about the identity of the intended targets. The threat therefore went beyond general abusive or inflammatory language and invoked a weapon capable of causing severe injury or death against people because they were Hindu. In the broader context of documented persecution and intimidation faced by Hindus in Bangladesh, such rhetoric is particularly significant because threats of this nature reinforces the existing climate of insecurity among the Hindu religious minority. By associating Hindu identity with a threat of violent attack, the statement contributed to the intimidation of the wider community and demonstrated that the hostility was directed at Hindus on religious grounds. The explicit identification of Hindus as the targets of violence consequently provided a clear indication of the discriminatory motive underlying the threat. The targeting also extended to Hindu religious beliefs and symbols. The men invoked Maa Kali and Dhakeshwari in the course of making threats and derogatory remarks, bringing Hindu deities directly into the hostile rhetoric. This was significant because the hostility was not confined to Hindu individuals but extended to figures central to Hindu religious belief and worship. By referring to Hindu deities in a threatening and degrading context, the perpetrators reinforced the religious character of their hostility and conveyed contempt towards the faith itself. The invocation of Hindu religious figures and places of worship alongside threats against Hindus therefore contributed to an atmosphere of religious intimidation in which both Hindu believers and important expressions of their faith were targeted. Such threats also had a broader intimidatory effect extending beyond the individuals seen in the video or any immediate victims. Publicly directed threats against an entire religious community can serve as a warning to other members of that community, creating fear and discouraging them from asserting their religious identity or resisting hostility. In this context, the combination of threats of bodily harm, forced religious humiliation, derogatory references to Hindu deities and demands for Hindus to leave Bangladesh conveyed a message of intimidation to the wider Hindu population. The targeting of Hindu religious identity at multiple levels, individual believers, their bodily integrity, their religious beliefs and their continued presence in the country, made the incident particularly significant as an expression of anti-Hindu hostility. The Muslim perpetrators' collective targeting of Hindus therefore demonstrated a clear discriminatory and religious motive. The threats were not incidental to the incident; Hindu identity was itself the basis upon which violence, humiliation and exclusion were directed. The reference to Hindu deities reinforced the hostility towards the religion, while the threats against Hindus demonstrated hostility towards its adherents. Taken together, these elements showed that the incident sought to intimidate and demean members of a religious minority because of their faith and to reinforce an environment in which Hindu religious identity was subjected to threats and hostility. On these grounds, the incident was documented as an instance of anti-Hindu hate, rooted in religious animosity.
Case Status
Unknown
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
