Hindu youth stripped and beaten after being forced to reveal religious identity over minor dispute

Case ID : aa4b007 | Location : Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 26 April, 2025

Case ID : aa4b007

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

26 April, 2025

Hindu youth stripped and beaten after being forced to reveal religious identity over minor dispute

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, a group of Muslims assaulted a young Hindu man after questioning him about his religion. The Hindu youth was assaulted over a minor dispute. The accused first asked the youth his name, then forced him to remove his trousers, and subsequently beat him with sticks and rods after confirming his religion. The incident occurred at Unity Crossing in the Gudamba police station area. The police arrested the main accused and sent him to jail, while two of his accomplices remained at large. Shashank Maurya, a resident of Phoolbagh Colony under the Gudamba police station, lodged a written complaint with the police stating that he had been assaulted after being asked about his religion. Narrating what led to the brutal attack on him, Shashank stated that his slipper broke while walking a short distance from his house. He borrowed a pair of slippers from a friend. At that point, a motor mechanic named Chand stopped Shashank and accused him of wearing his slippers. When Shashank resisted, Chand and two of his companions dragged him into a shop. According to reports, Shashank stated that the accused forcibly made him remove his trousers and asked him about his religious beliefs. When he refused to respond, they assaulted him with sticks and rods. A case was registered against Chand and his two companions. Gudamba police arrested Chand and sent him to jail. They also started examining CCTV footage from the vicinity of the incident. Inspector Prabhatesh Kumar Srivastava of Gudamba police station informed that Chand and his accomplices had been booked under serious sections related to assault, intimidation, and other offences. While Chand had been arrested and jailed, efforts were underway to apprehend his two accomplices. The police stated that their arrest would be made soon. It is important to mention that the FIR does not explicitly mention that the victim was asked his religion, but he was stripped nevertheless. This incident comes shortly after the Pahalgam terror attack in which Hindus were selectively targeted and killed after identity verification, revealing a chilling pattern that cannot be dismissed as coincidental.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is categorised under the primary category- Attack not resulting in death. Under that, the relevant sub-category 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 is a hate crime because the victim was targeted because of his Hindu identity. According to the reports, the attackers first asked the victim’s name, then forced him to remove his clothes, and questioned him about his religion. These steps suggest the attack wasn’t random. Instead, the victim was picked out specifically for being Hindu. Even though the official police report (FIR) doesn’t mention the part about asking his religion, the way things happened makes it clear that the violence was meant to humiliate and harm him after his religious background was confirmed. It is important to note that this assault on Shashank Maurya in Lucknow’s Gudamba area follows a similar pattern to the Pahalgam terror attack. In both incidents, the perpetrators followed a similar modus operandi—first identifying the victim’s religion, often through questioning or forced exposure, and then unleashing violence once the Hindu identity was confirmed. In the Pahalgam attack, Islamic terrorists reportedly asked for names, forcefully pulled the pants down of Hindu men and asked the victims to recite Kalma to determine the religious identity of their targets before executing them. Similarly, in the Lucknow assault, the accused questioned Shashank about his name and then forcibly stripped him to verify his religious affiliation before beating him with sticks and rods. This disturbing repetition is not coincidental; it reveals a deliberate mimicry of extremist tactics at the local level and shows how the psychological and ideological influence of jihadist violence can percolate into everyday communal dynamics.