Hindu woman and son assaulted, abused with religious slurs, and threatened over missing mobile

Case ID : d3271bd | Location : Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 17 January, 2026

Case ID : d3271bd

Uttar Pradesh, India

17 January, 2026

Hindu woman and son assaulted, abused with religious slurs, and threatened over missing mobile

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

A Hindu woman and her son were attacked inside their home in Bhud Bisoli village under the Faizganj Behta police station area in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, after a dispute triggered by suspicion over a missing mobile phone. The victim stated that she and her son were beaten with sticks and clubs, abused with religious slurs, and threatened with murder and eviction, turning a petty theft-related issue into a brutal, communal flashpoint. As per the woman’s written complaint, a mobile phone had been stolen from her house a day earlier. On Sunday (January 18, 2026) morning, she went up to the roof to search for it. During this time, she said Rajjan, identified as the son of Shabana, made a remark suggesting he already knew she had been looking for the phone since the previous day. The woman questioned how he knew this. She stated that he responded by saying that a one-rupee deposit slip was kept along with the phone. The woman further stated that when she came downstairs, she found a torn slip lying near Shabana’s door, which deepened her suspicion and escalated tensions between the two sides. According to the complaint, soon after this exchange, Rajjan forcibly dragged the woman’s son, Arun, inside a house and began beating him. Hearing her son’s cries, the woman rushed to intervene. She stated that Rajjan, along with Nanku Khan and Furman, identified as sons of Basri Khan, entered the house carrying sticks and clubs and assaulted both her and her son. The victim stated that she suffered injuries during the assault, including a head injury. She said she was struck on the head with the intent to kill. She also stated that throughout the beating, the attackers used religious slurs and issued threats to kill them and force them to vacate their home, intensifying the violence beyond physical harm into targeted communal intimidation. The injured woman was admitted to the hospital and medically examined. Police said a case was registered on the basis of the complaint, and an investigation was underway. The incident also drew anger from local Hindu groups, who demanded strict action against the individuals named in the case.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The incident has been added under the primary category- Hate speech against Hindus. Under this, the sub-category 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. The other category relevant here is- Attack not resulting in death. Under this, the sub-category 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. In this incident, the abuse directed at the Hindu woman and her son went beyond ordinary verbal aggression and took the form of targeted hate speech. The use of anti Hindu slurs during the assault marks a clear attempt to degrade them for their religious identity, not merely to intimidate them as individuals. When religious slurs are used in the middle of a physical attack, the language functions as a tool of humiliation, signalling that the victims are being treated as inferior or deserving of violence because they are Hindu. The threats that accompanied the slurs, including intimidation to drive the family out of their home, further reinforce the hate speech element. Such threats, paired with communal abuse, are designed to create fear and force social submission, turning the victim’s Hindu identity into the basis for coercion. This is not just hostile speech; it is identity-based intimidation aimed at silencing, isolating, and displacing the victims. Alongside the slurs, the physical assault reflects an attack linked to Hindu identity. The violence escalated inside the home, involved multiple assailants, and included serious blows, including to the head. The combination of bodily harm with communal slurs shows that the victims were not only attacked over a dispute but were also targeted with language that explicitly framed them through a religious lens. In such cases, the slurs act as the clearest indicator of motive, revealing that Hindu identity was being invoked to justify the assault and intensify the cruelty. Taken together, the incident reflects both anti-Hindu hate speech and an attack where the victims’ Hindu identity was invoked to threaten, humiliate, and terrorise them.