Hindu Navratri Puja disrupted as woman throws non-vegetarian food at ritual, abuses Hindus and threatens them with death for objecting

Case ID : 30aaef9 | Location : Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 21 October, 2026

Case ID : 30aaef9

Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, India

21 October, 2026

Hindu Navratri Puja disrupted as woman throws non-vegetarian food at ritual, abuses Hindus and threatens them with death for objecting

Attack on Hindu religious representations

Defiling religious customs

Case Summary

In Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, a Navratri puja ceremony was disrupted when a woman threw a plate containing non-vegetarian food during the religious observance. The complainant, Akash Babu, also stated that the woman misbehaved with him and his family and threatened to kill them. The incident took place in Jiwaai village, under the Patwai police station area, while Akash Babu and his family were performing Navratri worship. During the ceremony, the woman got into a dispute with the family and threw a plate of non-vegetarian food at the place where they were worshipping. Akash Babu subsequently approached Patwai Police Station and submitted a written complaint detailing the disruption of the worship, the misbehaviour towards his family and the death threats. Police registered the complaint and began investigating the incident and the circumstances surrounding the disruption of the Navratri worship. In a similar incident, in Hyderabad, Telangana, Navratri celebrations were desecrated when a Muslim woman dumped fish waste, along with water used to clean fish, outside a Hindu temple where an annaprasadam event was taking place.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category: Attack on Hindu religious representations. The subcategory selected is: Defiling religious customs. Sanatan Dharma is not a religion of one book, which is to say that while it has religious scriptures that form the central tenets of the faith, there are several traditions followed through thousands of years, mostly passed from generation to generation orally. There are several such customs and traditions that are followed by various Hindus and Hindu sects. Defiling these traditions and customs is a breach of an individual or group’s religious practices. Such practices can range from dietary restrictions like not eating non-vegetarian food for a certain period of the year, not eating non-vegetarian food at all, not eating beef since the cow is considered holy in Hinduism, the sanctity of religious customs followed in the house (like many ISKCON devotees), etc. Any malicious action leading to the breach of such traditions or defilement of these traditions owing to animosity towards the faith or for the sake of activism stems not only from the lack of faith in the religion itself but also from disregard for the faith of the devotees who follow the customs/traditions and implicit bias against the faith and the tradition itself. Since these specific traditions are central to the faith of the devotees of that specific sect of Hindus, any non-compliance with these traditional rules would be considered a religiously motivated hate crime. This case qualifies as a religiously motivated hate crime because non-vegetarian food was deliberately thrown during an ongoing Navratri worship, directly violating the ritual purity associated with the Hindu observance. The dispute was not confined to an ordinary disagreement with the family. The religious ceremony itself was interfered with, turning a personal confrontation into an act that affected the family specifically while they were practising their Hindu faith. Navratri is one of the most sacred periods in Hindu Dharma, dedicated to the worship of the Divine Mother, particularly Goddess Durga. Devotees commonly observe the festival through Puja, fasting, dietary discipline and other practices intended to maintain religious purity. Many Hindus completely abstain from meat, eggs and other non-vegetarian food during this period. Introducing non-vegetarian food into an active Navratri worship therefore directly violates a religious custom that devotees consciously maintain as part of their worship. The significance lies not merely in the presence of non-vegetarian food, but in throwing it during the Puja itself. A space in which Hindu worship is being performed acquires religious sanctity through the presence of the deity, offerings, prayers and ritual practices. Deliberately bringing something regarded as incompatible with the observance into that setting defiles the religious environment and shows disregard for the customs being followed by the worshippers. The accompanying death threats and abusive conduct towards the Hindu family further intensified the intimidation surrounding their religious observance. Instead of allowing the family to continue its Navratri worship peacefully, the confrontation entered the sacred setting itself. This made the religious practice part of the hostility and created fear around an occasion that should have been devoted to worship and celebration. Taken together, the timing during Navratri, the deliberate use of non-vegetarian food during the Puja, the violation of ritual purity and the intimidation directed at the worshipping family distinguish the incident from an ordinary interpersonal dispute. The conduct directly interfered with a Hindu religious custom and desecrated the sanctity of an ongoing religious observance, and reflected profound disregard the perpetrator harboured for the faith and its practices, stemming from underlying animosity toward Hinduism. This makes it appropriate for documentation as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the incident occurred, not when it later came to public attention. In this case, the available information did not allow us to ascertain the exact date on which the Navratri worship was disrupted, and non-vegetarian food was thrown during the Puja. Therefore, we selected 21st October 2026, the date the incident came to public attention through a news portal, as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes.