Hindu woman targeted, threatened and abused with communal slurs by Muslims in Bangladesh amidst ongoing persecution of Hindus

Case ID : d326e4a | Location : Kurigram District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Fri, 2 January, 2026

Case ID : d326e4a

Kurigram District, Bangladesh

2 January, 2026

Hindu woman targeted, threatened and abused with communal slurs by Muslims in Bangladesh amidst ongoing persecution of Hindus

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Case Summary

In Kurigram District, Bangladesh, a Hindu district commissioner officer, Annapurna Debnath, was targeted, threatened, and abused with communal slurs by Muslims who were members of Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Islamic group. This incident occurred on 3 January 2026. According to media reports, the victim was targeted after she cancelled the nomination of a Jamaat-e-Islami candidate, Barrister Salehi, ahead of the upcoming general elections scheduled for February 2026. The nomination was cancelled as the Muslim candidate held dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and Bangladesh, which election rules did not allow. Following the decision, Salehi's Muslim supporters staged a protest at the district office. Videos from inside the nomination centre showed chaos as Annapurna announced the cancellation. The Muslim group shouted slogans and disrupted official proceedings inside the hall. During the protest, the Muslim demonstrators hurled communal slurs at Annapurna and demanded her resignation. The Muslims also shouted that she should not remain in the district. They also threatened Annapurna that she would not be allowed to carry out her work in Bangladesh. The protesters hurled communal slurs, calling her an "ISKCON member", "broker of the Awami League and India," and an "Indian agent", which further escalated tensions. A fresh wave of anti-Hindu violence prevailed across Bangladesh following the death of Sharif Osman Bin Hadi. This escalation occurred against the backdrop of ongoing anti-Hindu violence that had persisted since the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024, during which Hindu homes, temples, and religious spaces were repeatedly attacked, and the Hindu community faced intimidation, arson, and mob attacks. In the aftermath of Hadi’s death, Hindu homes were selectively targeted and set ablaze in multiple localities by Muslim mobs, forcing families to flee and rendering many homeless. The violence was not sporadic but patterned, with Muslim mobs targeting Hindu neighbourhoods, properties, and religious symbols with impunity. One of the many victims of this wave of violence was a Hindu man named Dipu Chandra Das, who was brutally lynched by a Muslim mob over false allegations of blasphemy. Such targeting of innocent Hindus over fabricated charges illustrated the vulnerability of the Hindu minority under conditions of rising communal hostility. Posters and written materials calling for the extermination of Hindus were displayed in public spaces, signalling an alarming normalisation of genocidal rhetoric. Combined with acts of physical violence, arson, and vandalism, these developments demonstrated a coordinated campaign designed to terrorise the Hindu community and assert Islamic dominance. Notably, Sharif Osman Bin Hadi was a Muslim political activist and student leader known for his anti-Hindu and anti-India stance. He was actively involved in the political unrest that followed the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government and was killed in Dhaka in December 2025 during clashes, after which Hindus were blamed and subsequently targeted.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is- Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory selected in this case 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. Another primary category selected is- Hate Speech against Hindus. The subcategory selected is- Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem out of inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith, therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. This case stands as a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, as the Hindu woman, Annapurna Debnath, faced selective targeting for her religious identity and endured communal slurs from members of Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Muslim group. She cancelled the nomination of their candidate, Barrister Salehi, solely for holding dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and Bangladesh, which election rules prohibited. Just for enforcing this law, the Muslim perpetrators unleashed communal and religious slurs against her, which proves they sought to punish her Hindu identity above all else. Targeting a Hindu woman with such slurs exposes deep-seated religious animosity towards the Hindu community that the perpetrators held, marking it as a clear case of religiously motivated offence. Furthermore, the Muslim perpetrators' threats to bar Annapurna from doing her work in Bangladesh reveal their deliberate intent to intimidate and terrorise a Hindu woman due to her faith identity, confirming this as a religiously motivated crime. The abuse branding her an Indian agent, Awami League agent, or ISKCON member shows how these terms serve as pretexts to attack Hindus, while the true driving motivation remains the victim's religious identity. In Bangladesh, ISKCON, a Hindu religious and spiritual organisation, faces deliberate vilification by Muslims who label its followers as Hindutva extremists or Indian agents. Therefore, in this case, abusing the Hindu victim by calling her an ISKCON member thus constitutes a stark act fuelled by religious animosity towards a Hindu group and Hindus in general, with such buzzwords exploited to justify violence and targeting. Notably, the Hinduphobia Tracker previously documented vicious anti-Hindu campaigns by Muslim extremists in Bangladesh during October 2025. These Muslims falsely vilified the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as "Hindutva extremists" and "terrorists", demanding its outright ban. Another point to highlight is that this incident occurred just days after a Hindu man, Dipu Chandra Das, was brutally lynched to death by a Muslim mob in Bhaluka town, Bangladesh, on 18 December 2025, sparked by a fabricated blasphemy charge against Islam. Such relentless attacks on Hindus expose a grim pattern, placing this case squarely within a cycle of religiously fuelled attacks against them. As this incident fits the clear hallmarks of a religiously motivated offence, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker.