Hindu freedom fighter attacked amidst ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh

Case ID : 5954b63 | Location : Gaibandha District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Sat, 21 September, 2024

Case ID : 5954b63

Gaibandha District, Bangladesh

21 September, 2024

Hindu freedom fighter attacked amidst ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

A 74-year-old Hindu freedom fighter, Khagendra Nath Pramanik, was attacked in his home in Gobindaganj Upazila, Gaibandha. The elderly man, highly respected in the community and with no known enemies, was assaulted with a sharp weapon, leaving him critically injured. His wife, Suniti Bala, filed a case at the Gobindaganj Police Station against unidentified individuals. Police have detained a 50-year-old woman for interrogation. According to local residents and police, Khagendra was alone at his home in Jhilpara when, around 12:30 a.m., a group of miscreants broke in, created a scuffle, and stabbed him with a fish knife. Hearing his cries of pain, neighbours rushed to the scene and took him to a nearby hospital. Since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024, 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 attacked Hindu homes, burned them to the ground, and abducted women in a horrific descent into anarchy. Several temples were destroyed in the area in a major crackdown on Hindus.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected is - Attack not resulting in death. The sub-category selected 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. In this case, while the available details do not explicitly indicate a religious motive, the broader context cannot be ignored. When there is an ongoing ethnic cleansing based on religious identity, every crime in and of itself is assumed to be motivated by the same religious animosity, even if there is a lack of a specific religious marker in the immediate crime. During an ongoing ethnic cleansing, the dehumanisation of people based on their religious identity and the normalisation of religious hostility drive the crimes committed against them, even when there is a lack of stated religious motive. For the purpose of documenting the 2024 ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh, the Hinduphobia Tracker is assuming religious motivation ab initio. If a case is specifically and beyond a reasonable doubt proven to be driven by motivations other than religious hostility, it will post-facto be removed from the hate crime database.