Hindu journalist brutally attacked by Muslim mob outside Shyama Puja Mandap in Bangladesh

Case ID : 3234643 | Location : Chittagong District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Sat, 18 October, 2025

Case ID : 3234643

Chittagong District, Bangladesh

18 October, 2025

Hindu journalist brutally attacked by Muslim mob outside Shyama Puja Mandap in Bangladesh

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

A Hindu journalist was attacked by a Muslim mob in Sitakunda, Chittagong, Bangladesh, on 19 October 2025. The victim, 45-year-old Liton Kumar Chowdhury, who works as the Sitakunda correspondent for the daily Janakantha and is a former general secretary of the Sitakunda Press Club, was brutally beaten in front of the Shyama Puja Mandap near the Railgate area of Sitakunda Municipality. Witnesses said the attackers belonged to the Asad Bahini group. They accused Chowdhury of being an “Awami League agent” and spreading “fake news.” A video of the assault later surfaced on social media, showing the mob’s violent attack. After the beating, Chowdhury was handed over to the police in a severely injured condition. Officers first took him to the Sitakunda Upazila Health Complex for initial treatment and then referred him to Chittagong Medical College Hospital due to the seriousness of his injuries. His son, Rakesh Chowdhury, told Prothom Alo that his father was standing outside their home, speaking with locals, when a group of young men suddenly approached, hurled insults, and began assaulting him. They also snatched his mobile phone and wallet during the attack. Chowdhury sustained serious head injuries and lost a significant amount of blood before being hospitalised. This case serves as a stark reminder of the growing Muslim extremism and anti-Hindu sentiments in Bangladesh, which have only increased manifold since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024. After her violent ouster, Bangladesh plunged into chaos as Islamist extremists took advantage of the political turmoil to unleash a wave of terror and violence against the Hindu community. The Islamist mobs have attacked Hindu homes, burned them to the ground, and abducted women in a horrific descent into anarchy. Several temples have been destroyed in various parts of the Islamic country in a major crackdown on Hindus. Reports have exposed how Muslim students forced around 60 Hindu teachers, professors, and government officials to resign. Exiled Bangladeshi activist Asad Noor has also revealed that the minority Hindu community is now being coerced into joining ‘Jamaat-e-Islami’. Hindu religious events have been repeatedly targeted. On 6th September, a procession carrying Lord Ganesha’s idol was attacked in Chittagong. Ahead of Durga Puja, multiple incidents of idol vandalism occurred, including attacks in Mymensingh, Pabna, Rajshahi, Kishoreganj, and Dhaka. On 29th November, a violent Muslim mob attacked three temples in Patharghata, Chittagong, immediately after Jumma Namaz. The crackdown on Hindu voices has also escalated. On 30th November, Hindu journalist Munni Saha was arrested in Dhaka. Muslim mob attacks have increased in Bangladesh, for example, on 22nd May 2025, a Muslim mob carried out arson attacks selectively on Hindu homes in Dahar Mashihati village in Abhaynagar upazila in Jessore district of Bangladesh. Even ISKCON leader Chinmoy Krishna Das Prabhu and his aides have been targeted, and attempts have been made to ban ISKCON and suppress Hindu protests through sedition charges. These arbitrary actions point to a systematic pattern of persecution under Muhammad Yunus’s interim government.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory under this 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 has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker as a hate crime against Hindus because it reflects the continuing persecution of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, where attacks, intimidation, and systemic discrimination have become a daily reality. Although the immediate assault on journalist Liton Kumar Chowdhury may appear to stem from political allegations or personal disputes, its context within the wider pattern of targeted violence against Hindus makes it inseparable from the ongoing religiously motivated campaign of terror unfolding across Bangladesh since August 2024. By categorising this case under “Attack not resulting in death” with the subcategory “Attacked for Hindu identity,” the Hinduphobia Tracker recognises that the victim’s Hindu identity made him a target of violence. The attackers’ affiliation with Islamist groups, the repeated targeting of Hindu journalists, and the setting of the attack outside a Hindu religious site — the Shyama Puja Mandap — further reinforce that the crime cannot be seen in isolation. Even though explicit religious markers were not invoked during the assault, the act took place in a socio-political environment where Hindus are systematically demonised, dispossessed, and assaulted by Islamist groups operating with impunity. If a similar incident had occurred in a neutral or religiously diverse environment, the case might have been placed in the “Undecided” category of the Hinduphobia Tracker, allowing for interpretation as a possible crime of opportunity or politically driven violence. However, Bangladesh, since 2024, is undergoing what can only be described as an organised campaign of ethnic cleansing against its Hindu minority. In such a climate, every act of aggression against a Hindu individual carries a communal undertone, driven by the deep-seated hostility and dehumanisation that have been normalised through extremist propaganda and religious supremacism. During a continuing pattern of ethnic cleansing, the line between individual crime and systemic persecution dissolves. The victim’s identity as a Hindu journalist automatically situates him within a persecuted demographic, making it impossible to separate the crime from the broader context of religious violence. The attackers’ actions, whether consciously or subconsciously, are shaped by a social environment where attacking a Hindu is seen as an act of ideological conformity rather than individual aggression. For the purpose of documenting the 2024–25 ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh, the Hinduphobia Tracker assumes religious motivation ab initio in all cases where the victims are Hindus subjected to violence, intimidation, or targeted harassment during this period. This is done to accurately reflect the systemic nature of the violence rather than reduce each incident to an isolated occurrence. If in future evidence emerges that conclusively proves that this particular attack was driven by motives entirely unrelated to the victim’s Hindu identity or the broader anti-Hindu hostility in Bangladesh, the case will be reviewed and, if necessary, removed from the hate crime database. In essence, the assault on Liton Kumar Chowdhury exemplifies how anti-Hindu hatred in Bangladesh now manifests across social, political, and professional spheres. It serves as another entry in the ongoing chronicle of targeted violence that aims to silence Hindu voices, intimidate minority professionals, and erase the public presence of Hindus from Bangladesh’s civic landscape.