Hindu man stabbed to death by unidentified people in Bangladesh amidst ongoing persecution of Hindus

Case ID : d326efe | Location : Faridpur District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Thu, 4 December, 2025

Case ID : d326efe

Faridpur District, Bangladesh

4 December, 2025

Hindu man stabbed to death by unidentified people in Bangladesh amidst ongoing persecution of Hindus

Attack resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Saltha Upazila in the Faridpur district of Bangladesh, a 35-year-old Hindu fish trader named Utpal Sarkar was attacked and killed by a few unidentified people in the wee hours of the morning of 5 December 2025. According to reports, at the time of the incident, he was on his way to Muksudpur in Gopalganj to purchase fish, travelling in a battery-powered van. On the way, three to four unidentified attackers stopped the van and stabbed the Hindu victim in the chest. They also looted the money that Utpal Sarkar had in his possession before fleeing the crime scene. However, the attackers left the van driver, Firoz Molla, a Muslim man, unharmed. He was only blindfolded and tied to a bridge. Later, local residents rescued Molla and informed the police. The police thereafter sent the dead body of the Hindu victim, Utpal Sarkar, to the Faridpur Medical College Hospital. Saltha police station officer-in-charge KM Maruf Hasan said that two to three assailants were involved in the incident, according to preliminary findings. He also added that the incident could not be categorised as a robbery at this stage. “An investigation is underway. The actual motive will be known once the inquiry is complete,” he said. 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 ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Attack resulting in death. Within this, 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. This case constitutes a clear instance of a religiously motivated crime, as a 35-year-old Hindu man, Utpal Sarkar, was singled out and killed by a few unidentified people in Bangladesh, a country that experiences sustained and well-documented persecution of Hindus. The killing did not occur in isolation; it reflects deep-seated hatred tied to the victim's faith in a nation gripped by anti-Hindu hostility. Regarding this incident, some may say 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 ongoing ethnic cleansing based on religious identity, every crime is assumed to be motivated by the same religious animosity, even if there is no specific religious marker in the immediate crime. During 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 no 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. The Hindu victim was subjected to brutal murder amidst the religious persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh. The timing and severity of this killing, with stabs to the chest, signalled hostility towards the victim's religious identity rather than a random act of violence. This demonstrated that he was brutalised and murdered not for any other reason but specifically for being a Hindu. The violence carried clear communal undertones, making it a religiously motivated offence. Another key indicator of the religious motivation behind the crime was that the Hindu victim, Utpal Sarkar, and the Muslim van driver, Firoz Molla, travelled together in the same battery-powered van. If the incident stemmed from robbery or any non-religious issue, the perpetrators would have targeted both equally. Yet they spared the Muslim driver, merely blindfolding and tying him to a bridge before fleeing, while selectively stabbing and killing the Hindu victim in the chest. This stark contrast showcases a clear case of religious profiling and the targeted killing of a Hindu man amidst the ongoing persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh. This demonstrates the perpetrators' deep-seated animosity towards the victim due to his faith identity rather than any non-religious motive. The murder of a Hindu man over his identity laid bare the terror Hindus face in Bangladesh, where simply existing as one invites deadly violence. Such targeted brutality unmasked profound animosity towards Hinduism and its adherents, marking this as an undeniable instance of a hate-driven attack. Even though the religious identity of the perpetrators remained unknown, the act clearly demonstrated communal motivations behind the crime. Therefore, this case was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: In this case, media reports stated that three to four perpetrators killed the Hindu victim, whereas the police said two to three people were involved. Therefore, for documentation purposes, the perpetrator range has been selected as "2 to 5", and the precise perpetrator count has been recorded as four (4).