Hindu man tortured to death by Bangladesh police amidst ongoing persecution of Hindu community

Case ID : b1c5d70 | Location : Cox's Bazar District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Wed, 20 August, 2025

Case ID : b1c5d70

Cox's Bazar District, Bangladesh

20 August, 2025

Hindu man tortured to death by Bangladesh police amidst ongoing persecution of Hindu community

Attack resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Cox’s Bazar district, Bangladesh, a Hindu man named Durjoy Chaudhary was tortured to death by the Bangladesh police. This occurred while the victim was in police custody. According to reports, Durjoy Chaudhary worked as a clerk at Chakria Government High School, managing the school’s accounts. Tensions arose when some teachers raised concerns about missing funds, prompting certain Muslim colleagues, including the headmaster, Rabeya Khanam, to accuse Durjoy of financial irregularities. On 21 August 2025, police from Chakria Police Station detained Durjoy for questioning. The next day, authorities claimed he had committed suicide inside the lock-up. However, Durjoy’s father rejected this explanation, stating that his son had been beaten and murdered. He noted that Durjoy’s body was found partially unclothed, with his feet touching the ground, and showed visible signs of torture. The family filed a formal complaint seeking justice. The case triggered protests among local Hindus, who gathered in Chakria market demanding a fair investigation. They urged the Yunus-led government to take the matter seriously and escalate it to higher authorities to ensure accountability and justice for the victim. On 22nd August 2024, the dead body of the victim was sent for autopsy and thereafter handed over to the family. In the aftermath of the incident, three Muslim cops, namely Hanif Mia, Mohi Uddin and Ishraq Hossain, were withdrawn. This case serves as a stark reminder of the continued persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, which has only increased manifold since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024. After her violent ouster, 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 have attacked Hindu homes, burned them to the ground, and abducted women in a horrific descent into anarchy. Several temples have been destroyed in various parts of the Islamic country in a major crackdown on Hindus. Reports have exposed how Muslim students forced around 60 Hindu teachers, professors, and government officials to resign. Exiled Bangladeshi activist Asad Noor has also revealed that the minority Hindu community is now being coerced into joining ‘Jamaat-e-Islami’. Hindu religious events have been repeatedly targeted. On 6th September, a procession carrying Lord Ganesha’s idol was attacked in Chittagong. Ahead of Durga Puja, multiple incidents of idol vandalism occurred, including attacks in Mymensingh, Pabna, Rajshahi, Kishoreganj, and Dhaka. On 29th November, a violent Muslim mob attacked three temples in Patharghata, Chittagong, immediately after Jumma Namaz. The crackdown on Hindu voices has also escalated. On 30th November, Hindu journalist Munni Saha was arrested in Dhaka. Muslim mob attacks have increased in Bangladesh, for example, on 22nd May 2025, a Muslim mob carried out arson attacks selectively on Hindu homes in Dahar Mashihati village in Abhaynagar upazila in Jessore district of Bangladesh. Even ISKCON leader Chinmoy Krishna Das Prabhu and his aides have been targeted, and attempts have been made to ban ISKCON and suppress Hindu protests through sedition charges. These arbitrary actions point to a systematic pattern of persecution under Muhammad Yunus’s interim government.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Attack resulting in death. The subcategory under this 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 has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker due to the circumstances surrounding the murder of Durjoy Chaudhary and the broader context of escalating anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh. Durjoy, a Hindu clerk in Cox’s Bazar, was detained under allegations of financial irregularities, primarily raised by Muslim colleagues, and was tortured to death by the police in police custody. His father’s testimony of torture, the state in which his body was discovered, and the immediate involvement of authorities who claimed suicide collectively raise serious doubts about the official explanation. The combination of targeted accusations by colleagues and the failure of local authorities to provide a transparent investigation highlights the vulnerability of Hindus, particularly in a climate where religious animosity is rampant. The addition of this case to the Tracker is further justified when considering the ongoing environment of religious persecution in Bangladesh since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government on August 5, 2024. Islamist groups have leveraged political instability to execute systematic attacks on Hindus—raiding homes, abducting women, destroying temples, and coercing minority Hindus into Islamist organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami. Hindu professionals, including teachers and government officials like Durjoy, have been forcibly removed from their posts or intimidated, often under spurious allegations framed to appear neutral but masking deep-seated religious hostility. These patterns strongly indicate that Hindus are being targeted because of their religious identity, irrespective of any actual wrongdoing. In cases like this, the religious identity of the victim is central to understanding the crime. Durjoy’s murder fits the category of “Attack resulting in death – Attacked for Hindu identity,” wherein victims are singled out solely because of their Hindu faith. Hindus have repeatedly been subjected to lethal violence for publicly adhering to their faith. The systemic targeting of Hindu institutions, festivals, and professionals in Bangladesh underscores that Durjoy’s murder is not an isolated incident but part of a broader campaign of religiously motivated hostility towards members of the Hindu community. It is also important to note that 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. Given that this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated crime, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker.