Hindu woman gets abduction and rape threats for calling out terror attack on Hindus in Pahalgam

Case ID : aa4afc1 | Location : Ashoknagar Kalyangarh, West Bengal, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 23 April, 2025

Case ID : aa4afc1

Ashoknagar Kalyangarh, West Bengal, India

23 April, 2025

Hindu woman gets abduction and rape threats for calling out terror attack on Hindus in Pahalgam

Hate speech against Hindus

Violent threats

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim

Case Summary

In a horrific act of terror in the Baisaran Valley of Pahalgam, Anantnag district, Jammu and Kashmir, Islamic terrorists systematically identified and targeted Hindu victims. The terrorists demanded names and religious identities, inspected ID cards, coerced tourists to recite the Kalma, and even forcibly pulled down their pants to check for circumcision—all to single out non-Muslims. Once identified, the Hindus were shot at point-blank range. The attack, carried out by terrorists of the Resistance Force, a proxy of the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed the lives of 24 Hindus and left 16 others critically injured. Following the incident, many Hindus expressed their anger against the heinous attack on Hindus. One of them was Priyanka Dutta, a Hindu woman from Ashoknagar Kalyangarh in West Bengal. However, she faced threats of abduction and rape after expressing her outrage over the Pahalgam terror attack on social media. In a video that surfaced online, she described how a wave of verbal abuse followed her posts, with individuals targeting her for her views and issuing sexual threats when they were unable to counter her opinions through reasoned argument. According to Dutta, the threats escalated from public abuse to personal intimidation via direct messages. One of the accused, identified as Mj Maruf, repeatedly contacted her on Messenger, urging her to share her address and threatening her safety. He made multiple voice calls and sent messages laced with expletives and rape threats. Another individual using the pseudonym ‘Misti Mayer Dusto Chela’ also targeted her. Screenshots shared by Dutta showed the second accused wearing an Islamic skullcap and identifying as a member of the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad, according to his Facebook profile. Priyanka Dutta narrated that she was being coerced into deleting the video, where she revealed that she was being threatened with abduction and rape for voicing her opinion against the Pahalgam terror attack. Eventually, the victim deleted the video. She had explained the reason in a Facebook post on Friday (25th April). She informed that 7-8 police officers and 2 Officers-in-Charge landed at her home and forced her to delete the video where she tearfully described how 2 Muslim men threatened to abduct and rape her. The victim added that she feared that the police could do harm to her parents or implicate them on fabricated charges. Despite attempts to pressure her into deleting the video in which she described the threats, Dutta’s testimony was widely circulated on social media. The video continued to gain traction as netizens who had earlier downloaded it shared it across platforms, bringing attention to the harassment she endured for speaking out against the targeted killing of Hindus.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is categorised under the primary category- Hate Speech against Hindus. Under that, the relevant sub-category is- Violent threats. Violent threats, explicit, implicit or implied, is the most dangerous form of hate speech since it goes beyond discriminatory and prejudicial language to express the intent of causing harm to an individual or a group of people based on their religious identity and faith. There could be several different kinds of threats that are issued to Hindus based on religious animosity. An explicit threat would mean the direct threat of violence towards an individual Hindu, a group of Hindus or Hindus at large. Physical violence, death threats, threats of destruction of property belonging to Hindus and threats of genocide would mean explicit threats against Hindus for their religious identity. Implicit threats may not be a direct threat but implied through the use of symbols of actions – for example – in the Nupur Sharma case, other than explicit threats, there were also implicit threats when Islamists took to the streets to burn and beat her effigies. It implies that they want to do the same to Nupur Sharma – thereby is considered an implicit threat. Violent threats can be delivered in person, through letters, phone calls, graffiti, or increasingly through social media and other online platforms. It would be important to understand that a threat – explicit or implicit, online or offline – to an individual who happens to be a Hindu does not qualify as a religiously motivated threat. Such a threat, while vile and dangerous, could be owing to non-religious reasons and/or personal animosity. To qualify as a religiously motivated threat, it would need to exhibit an indication that the individual is being targeted for religious reasons and/or owing to his/her religious identity as a Hindu. The second category relevant here is- Attack not resulting in death, and the sub-category selected within this is- Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim. In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. This case qualifies as a hate crime as it involves explicit threats of abduction and rape issued to a Hindu woman, Priyanka Dutta, for voicing her views in response to the Pahalgam terror attack. The threats were not issued randomly or based on personal animosity, but were triggered directly by her religious identity and her expression of solidarity with Hindu victims of the terror attack. The targeted abuse escalated when the perpetrators, unable to counter her views through dialogue, resorted to violent intimidation clearly aimed at silencing her Hindu voice. The threats she received were not vague or general in nature. The accused demanded her home address, made repeated audio calls, and threatened to abduct and rape her. Such targeted violence, especially when directed at Hindu women who speak up against religiously motivated violence, reflects a pattern of hate speech that seeks to deter Hindu voices through fear and coercion. Therefore, the threats issued to Priyanka Dutta constitute not only criminal intimidation but a violent, religiously motivated hate crime and warrant inclusion in the Hinduphobia Tracker.