Hindu man abused for his religious identity and brutally assaulted by Muslim man in Sindh, Pakistan

Case ID : d327434 | Location : Sindh, Pakistan | Date of Incident : Fri, 23 January, 2026

Case ID : d327434

Sindh, Pakistan

23 January, 2026

Hindu man abused for his religious identity and brutally assaulted by Muslim man in Sindh, Pakistan

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Case Summary

A young Hindu businessman named Vishal Kumar was brutally assaulted and subjected to torture by a Muslim man in Sindh, Pakistan. The victim was also abused and humiliated for being a Hindu. According to media reports, the victim, Vishal Kumar, was the business partner of the Muslim man, Sardar Raja Khan Mehr, Member of Provincial Assembly Sindh. Both partners had financial disagreements, and owing to that, their dispute started, in which Vishal was brutally attacked with sticks and was subjected to severe torture. As per the victim, the accused owed him a sum of 200 million. The accused had also taken a loan from various banks in the victim's name. When the victim asked the accused to clear the dues, the accused got angry and resorted to violence. The victim, while talking to the media, also stated that “He called me to his house; when I reached there, his men surrounded me. They started beating me with sticks and slapped me. They stripped me of my clothes and mocked me. They forced me to sit on the ground and insulted me. They told me I had no worth, that I was just a Hindu. I was tortured until I could not stand. I am terrified for my life and my family’s safety. I ask for justice and protection from these powerful people.” This case highlights the persistent persecution faced by the Hindu minorities in Pakistan, marked by systemic discrimination, violence, and forced conversions. Hindu women, particularly young girls, are often abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and married off to Muslim men with little to no legal recourse. Temples are frequently vandalised or destroyed, and Hindu communities are subjected to social and economic marginalisation. Blasphemy laws are disproportionately used against Hindus, leading to false accusations and severe punishments. Many Hindu families are forced to flee their homes due to religious intolerance, living in constant fear of attacks. This sustained persecution highlights the dire conditions for Hindus in Pakistan, where their religious identity makes them targets of oppression.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- 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 the 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. The other primary category selected for this case is: Hate Speech against Hindus. 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 from 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. In this case, the Hindu businessman was brutally beaten by the Muslim man and his aides because the victim belonged to the Hindu community. This was a clear case of religious animosity rather than a business dispute that had turned sour. The violence was not limited to financial disagreements but was rooted in the victim’s faith and community identity. This was proved when the Muslim men, while beating the Hindu victim, abused him and mocked him for being a Hindu. They stripped him of his clothes and dignity. Such acts went beyond physical assault and carried the deliberate intent of humiliating him based on his religion, with verbal attacks declaring him worthless for his faith, constituting hate speech that incited violence and dehumanised him. Attacking and torturing someone explicitly for their Hindu identity unequivocally amounted to a hate crime motivated by deep-seated religious animosity, transcending any business disagreement or dispute. Notably, the accused was not an ordinary individual but a Member of the Provincial Assembly of Sindh, Sardar Raja Khan Mehr. His position of political power was used to intimidate and silence the Hindu victim. This demonstrated how political authority itself had been weaponised against minorities, leaving Hindus vulnerable to violence without recourse to justice. The involvement of a sitting legislator showed that the persecution of Hindus was not only social but also entrenched within political structures. The case of Vishal Kumar is far from an isolated incident. Over the years, the Hinduphobia Tracker documented numerous similar incidents in which Hindu minorities in Pakistan were attacked, killed, abducted, forcibly converted, or subjected to severe torture by Muslim perpetrators. This repeated targeting revealed a clear pattern of systemic violence against the Hindu community. One such example is, in January 2026, in Chhachhro town, Tharparkar district, Sindh province, Pakistan, a Hindu family from the Dalit Meghwar community suffered a brutal attack by an armed Muslim mob from the Nohri community. Similarly, in January 2026, in Nasarpur city, Matiari district, Sindh province, Pakistan, a Muslim landlord torched a Hindu village, destroyed a Hindu temple, and demolished several Hindu homes. Likewise, in December 2025, in Umerkot, Sindh, a Hindu wedding procession faced attack by seven Muslim men, who assaulted the guests, attacked the bride and groom, and attempted to abduct the bride. The root cause of such continued targeting of minorities was religious animosity arising from the victims’ Hindu identity, compounded by an absence of accountability whereby cases involving minority Hindu victims were repeatedly delayed, deliberately weakened, or ignored, fostering a culture of impunity that allowed violence against minorities to persist unchecked. Since this current case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: In this case, the victim stated that multiple Muslims, including the main accused, attacked and brutally assaulted him. However, the total number of accused accomplices was not specified. Therefore, the perpetrator count has been recorded as 1, representing a conservative estimate that refers solely to the main accused, Sardar Raja Khan Mehr. The Hinduphobia Tracker records the date of an incident based on when a crime occurs rather than when it is reported by the media. However, in this case, the media reports did not state the exact date of the crime. Therefore, the date of the first media report on this case, 24 January 2026, has been selected as the indicative incident date. This date is recorded for documentation purposes only.