Hindu man working at a temple found in mutilated state in Bangladesh amidst the widespread Hindu persecution

Case ID : c72ab03 | Location : Gopalganj District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Sat, 31 May, 2025

Case ID : c72ab03

Gopalganj District, Bangladesh

31 May, 2025

Hindu man working at a temple found in mutilated state in Bangladesh amidst the widespread Hindu persecution

Attack resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Kotalipara Upazila, in the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, the mutilated body of a 70-year-old Hindu man, Budhimanta Sarkar, was found stuffed inside a rice sack and recovered from a canal. His legs had been severed. According to reports, Budhimanta had worked as a sevadar at the Sadachar Sevashram & Mandir for the past five to six years. He was the son of Kutiswar Sarkar and had been missing for three days before the discovery of his dead body. An earlier search operation had failed to locate him. His neighbour, Mrinmoy Sarkar, stated that Budhimanta stayed at the Sadachar Sevashram & Mandir each night. Kotalipara Police Station Officer-in-Charge, Mohammed Abul Kalam Azad, confirmed that the body was sent to Gopalganj General Hospital for a post-mortem examination. The OC added that it is likely the elderly man was murdered before his body was dumped in the canal. An investigation was launched into this matter. This case serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh. Since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024, Bangladesh has plunged into chaos as Islamist extremists have taken 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 ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Attack Resulting in Death. The subcategory 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 this case, the mutilated body of a Hindu man, who served at a temple, was found inside a rice sack. This discovery raises serious suspicions of targeted murder, particularly in light of the ongoing violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. The fact that the victim was a temple priest suggests the possibility that he was religiously profiled, targeted and murdered because of his religious identity, especially given the continued persecution of Bangladeshi Hindus following the exile of Sheikh Hasina. While the available details do not explicitly demonstrate 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 drives 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 reasonable doubt proven to be driven by motivations other than religious hostility, it will post-facto be removed from the hate crime database.