Hindu woman tied to pole, tortured with cold water by Muslim men in Bangladesh amidst ongoing persecution of Hindus

Case ID : d326e5a | Location : Dhaka District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Thu, 1 January, 2026

Case ID : d326e5a

Dhaka District, Bangladesh

1 January, 2026

Hindu woman tied to pole, tortured with cold water by Muslim men in Bangladesh amidst ongoing persecution of Hindus

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Morol Bazar, located in the Dhaka District of Bangladesh, a Hindu woman was tied to a pole and tortured with cold water poured on her by Muslim men. This incident occurred on 2 January 2026 during a cold winter morning. The Muslim perpetrators used the pretext of “theft” to launch this assault on the victim. A video of the incident went viral on social media. It showed the victim being tied to a pole and the Muslim men pouring cold water on her. The Muslim perpetrators claimed that the victim was committing theft. The police from Gulshan Police Station detained five Muslims for questioning over their involvement in the torture. Regarding this incident, the Gulshan Police Station officer-in-charge, Md Rakibul Hasan, and police officers who took part in the operation stated that the viral video came to the attention of the police and the location was identified as Morol Bazar in the Nadda area under Gulshan Police Station. After this, the police conducted a raid there and, with the help of local residents, reached Markajut Ta’lim Al-Islami Madrasah, where the incident took place. The madarasa staff claimed that between 06:30 AM and 07:00 AM on 2 January 2026, two students saw the Hindu woman reaching into the pocket of a Punjabi kurta hanging on a hanger in the room of a teacher named Lokman. When the children raised the alarm, another teacher named Ekram came out from a nearby room and detained the woman. The madrasah staff further claimed they initially intended to hand her over to the police but decided against it, saying it was too early in the morning to find police. They then decided to punish her themselves. As part of this punishment, the woman was tied up, and cold water was poured on her before she was released. Later, several people put her on a bus bound for Uttara. Someone from the crowd watching the punishment recorded the video and posted it on Facebook. Officer-in-charge Md Rakibul Hasan stated that police took immediate action after seeing the video and brought five people to the police station for questioning the same night. Those brought to the police station for questioning included two madrasah teachers, Lokman and Ekram, and three Muslim students. At the time of writing this report, no case has been filed so far, and a police team is searching for the victim. 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 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 stands as a clear instance of religiously motivated crime, as the Hindu victim was tied to a pole and cold water was poured on her by Muslim men to torture her. All this occurred during a winter morning in Bangladesh, amidst the ongoing religious persecution of Hindus in the country. This incident reflects deep-seated hatred tied to the victim's faith in a nation gripped by anti-Hindu hostility. While some may argue that the case details do not explicitly indicate a religious motive. However, the broader context of anti-Hindu persecution in Bangladesh 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 and the subsequent ongoing persecution following the death of Osman Hadi, the Hinduphobia Tracker assumes religious motivation from the outset. If any case is proven beyond a reasonable doubt to stem from motivations other than religious hostility, it will be removed from the hate crime database post-facto. The torture inflicted on the Hindu woman constituted a blatant case of religiously motivated crime, as the attack stemmed directly from animosity towards her faith identity. Amidst the relentless persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, this incident unequivocally demonstrated that it was no random crime of opportunity but a deliberate act of religious profiling and targeting of a Hindu woman because of her Hindu identity, a stark case of religious animosity in action. Targeting a Hindu woman for her religious identity and torturing her by pouring cold water on her during a chilly winter morning amounts to a blatant case of religiously motivated crime. A Hindu woman enduring such vicious torture and assault solely for her religious identity exposes deep-seated religious animosity, where Hindus suffer violence simply for being Hindus. This is a clear-cut case of an anti-Hindu hate crime. In this case, the perpetrators claimed that the attack occurred under the pretext of theft because the Hindu woman was allegedly caught stealing. Even if that were true, for which no evidence exists, the Muslim perpetrators had a duty to pursue legal measures. Instead, they fabricated a feeble excuse that police were unavailable at that hour, tied her to a pole, and subjected her to prolonged torture before releasing her. These flimsy pretexts merely masked their justification for assaulting and torturing a Hindu woman over her religious identity, confirming it as a clear case of religiously motivated crime. Notably, this attack took place just days after a Hindu man named Dipu Chandra Das suffered brutal mob-lynching, with his body set ablaze by a Muslim mob in Bhaluka town, Bangladesh, on 18 December 2025, all triggered by a false allegation of blasphemy. Such relentless targeting of Hindus proves these are not isolated incidents but coordinated, calculated assaults on the Hindu community, perpetrated by Muslims with utter impunity, marking it as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since this case fully meets the criteria for a religiously motivated offence, it has been added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: In this case, media reports confirmed that five people were taken to the police station for interrogation, and those individuals participated directly in the attack on the Hindu woman. While more perpetrators might have been involved, these five are specified in the reports; thus, the perpetrator count is documented as five (5) solely for documentation and record-keeping purposes.