Hindu man fatally stabbed in Canada after enduring racial abuse from neighbour

Case ID : aa4ae66 | Location : Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Date of Incident : Thu, 3 April, 2025

Case ID : aa4ae66

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

3 April, 2025

Hindu man fatally stabbed in Canada after enduring racial abuse from neighbour

Attack resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

Dharmesh Kathiriya, a 27-year-old Indian national from Gujarat, was stabbed to death in Rockland, a town near Ottawa, Canada. The incident took place in a shared laundry room of the building where he had lived. His neighbour, an 83-year-old white male named Giles Martel, had attacked him with a knife during an altercation. Kathiriya’s wife had also been present at the scene and faced an attempted attack, but her husband had intervened to protect her and suffered a fatal stab wound. Prior to the attack, Martel had repeatedly directed racial abuse and anti-Indian remarks towards Dharmesh and his wife. These tensions had built up over time, creating a hostile environment for the couple. The nature of the attack and Martel’s previous behaviour raised serious concerns about the racial motivations behind the crime. Martel was charged with second-degree homicide. Kathiriya, who had moved to Canada in 2019 as an international student, had been living there on a work permit at the time of his death. The incident sparked outrage and calls for justice within the Indian diaspora and among local communities in Canada, who demanded a deeper investigation into the racial elements surrounding the murder.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the category- Attack resulting in death and within this, 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. In the context of Dharmesh Kathiriya’s murder, it is crucial to understand that his Indian identity was not perceived in isolation, but rather as a marker of his Hindu identity—a perception deeply entrenched in the worldview of many adherents of Abrahamic faiths and Western supremacist ideologies. Within these frameworks, India is often viewed as a Hindu collectivity. For individuals harbouring hostility toward non-Abrahamic faiths, particularly in Western societies, the term “Indian” frequently serves as a coded reference to “Hindu.” As a result, Hindu immigrants in countries like Canada, the UK, and the US are often subjected to hate crimes that appear racially motivated on the surface but are, in truth, driven by religious animosity. Dharmesh and his wife were viewed through this very lens. The persistent racial abuse and anti-Indian slurs they endured prior to the fatal stabbing reveal more than mere xenophobic sentiment—they point to a deeper disdain for what the perpetrator perceived as their Hindu identity. The violence that ultimately took Dharmesh’s life was not simply a product of racial intolerance but a manifestation of civilizational hatred rooted in religious prejudice. This makes the incident a clear case of Hinduphobic violence and fully justifies its inclusion in the hate crime tracker.