Hindu man found dead in Chittagong amid ongoing Hindu genocide in Bangladesh

Case ID : 9957ff6 | Location : Chittagong District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Tue, 8 July, 2025

Case ID : 9957ff6

Chittagong District, Bangladesh

8 July, 2025

Hindu man found dead in Chittagong amid ongoing Hindu genocide in Bangladesh

Attack resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In the Fatikchhari area of Chittagong district, Bangladesh, a Hindu man named Santosh Nath was found dead under suspicious circumstances. On 20th July 2025, his semi-decomposed body was recovered from a canal in Lelang union, with his hands and feet bound. Santosh, aged 35, had been missing since 9th July 2025. The victim’s father, Parimal Nath, confirmed that Santosh had left home that day and did not return. He earned his livelihood by driving an auto-rickshaw and also lent money at interest. His wife, Jharna Rani Nath, expressed deep distress over his death, asking how she would now support their two children. The police sent the body for post-mortem examination. The cause of death had not yet been made public, but the condition in which the body was found suggested that Santosh Nath had been subjected to violence. This killing was part of a growing pattern of suspicious deaths targeting Hindu men in Bangladesh. On 7th July 2025, the body of a 20-year-old Hindu man named Tushar Chandra Roy was recovered from a hospital staff quarters in Lalmonirhat Sadar Upazila in the Rangpur Division. In June 2025, another Hindu victim, 62-year-old Prabir Mondal, was discovered dead in a Kewra orchard in Assasuni upazila of Satkhira district, also in a semi-decomposed state. This incident is a stark reminder of the atrocities Hindu minorities face in Islamic states like Bangladesh, which has only grown manifold following the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024. The instability had created an environment where extremist violence against the Hindu minority escalated. Reports indicated a surge in mob attacks targeting Hindu homes, many of which were set ablaze. Women were reportedly abducted and raped during these violent events. Additionally, multiple temples, including the historic Manasa Mata temple, were destroyed, further amplifying fear within the Hindu community.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: Attack resulting in death. Within it, 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, cases where the attack led to the death of the Hindu victim/s would be documented. This case must be understood not as an isolated criminal incident, but within the sustained context of religiously motivated violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. While the immediate facts of Santosh Nath’s murder, his disappearance, the state of the body, and the absence of explicit claims by the perpetrators do not, on the surface, cite a religious motive, the broader social and political environment renders such neutrality untenable. If such an incident had occurred elsewhere, we might have considered placing it under the "Undecided" database of the Hinduphobia Tracker, as the case details do not explicitly indicate a religious motive, allowing room to interpret it as a crime of opportunity or personal enmity. However, since, in this instance, the Hindu man was murdered in Bangladesh, 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 specific religious markers 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.