Hindu family attacked as Jamaat-e-Islami affiliated Muslim men declare Hindus have no right to dignity in Bangladesh

Case ID : d327a18 | Location : Sylhet, Sylhet District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Thu, 19 February, 2026

Case ID : d327a18

Sylhet, Sylhet District, Bangladesh

19 February, 2026

Hindu family attacked as Jamaat-e-Islami affiliated Muslim men declare Hindus have no right to dignity in Bangladesh

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Hate speech against Hindus

Violent threats

Case Summary

Four members of a Hindu family were brutally attacked by a group of Muslim men affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami at their residence in Ward Number 27, Gotatikor Paittypara area, Sylhet City Corporation, Bangladesh, on 20 February 2026. During the assault, communal remarks were made asserting that Hindus in a country that was ninety per cent Muslim had no right to basic human dignity. The attack continued for nearly two hours, and neighbouring Hindu homes were also targeted. The incident began when Rajesh Ray objected to a twelve-year-old Muslim boy damaging his motorcycle seat with a blade. What could have been a minor neighbourhood dispute escalated into organised violence. After Iftar, a group of local strongmen affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami, led by Sunam Ahmad, Akhtar Ahmad, Siraj Ahmad, Enam Ahmad, Khusrau and Rumel Mia, arrived at the Ray family residence and launched a coordinated attack. The four members of the Ray family who were assaulted were Rajesh Ray, his brother Rahul Ray, their elderly mother and Rahul’s wife, Laboni. The attack on the Ray family home, as well as neighbouring Hindu houses, continued for nearly two hours, leaving the family and their community shaken and traumatised. During the assault, the perpetrators directed explicit communal remarks at the Hindu family, asserting that being Hindu in a country that was ninety per cent Muslim meant living without basic human dignity. A written complaint was filed by the Ray family following the attack. The case drew wider attention within the context of an ongoing pattern of communally motivated violence against Hindus in Bangladesh, with the Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council documenting 522 such attacks across the country in 2025. A fresh wave of anti-Hindu violence followed the 13th National Parliamentary Election 2026 in Bangladesh, reinforcing a recurring pattern of post-poll violence targeting Hindu minorities. Within days of the announcement of results, Hindu families in districts such as Noakhali, Rangpur, Nilphamari, Sylhet, Thakurgaon, and Dinajpur reported coordinated attacks involving arson, looting, assault, and vandalism of temples and homes. In several instances, Hindu homes were selectively targeted, looted, and families were threatened with displacement. This escalation of violence against Hindus in Bangladesh unfolded in three distinct phases: first, following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024; second, after the death of Sharif Osman Bin Hadi in December 2025; and third, in the immediate aftermath of the 13th National Parliamentary Election 2026. This electoral violence unfolded against the broader backdrop of sustained anti-Hindu hostility that had persisted since the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024. During that period, multiple reports documented attacks on Hindu homes, temples, and religious institutions, alongside intimidation campaigns, arson, and mob assaults targeting minority neighbourhoods. The Hinduphobia tracker has recorded 336 such incidents against the Hindu minority, underscoring the scale and persistence of anti-Hindu violence during this period. A further escalation occurred following the death of Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, a Muslim political activist and student leader known for his anti-Hindu and anti-India rhetoric. Hadi had been involved in political unrest after the fall of the Hasina government and was killed in Dhaka on 18 December 2025 during clashes. In the aftermath of his death, Hindu communities were blamed and subsequently targeted in retaliatory violence. Hindu homes were selectively set ablaze in multiple localities, forcing families to flee and leaving many displaced. The attacks appeared patterned rather than sporadic, with Muslim mobs focusing on Hindu neighbourhoods, properties, and religious symbols. Among the victims was Dipu Chandra Das, who was lynched to death and his body was set ablaze by a Muslim mob over false blasphemy allegations. The Hinduphobia tracker documented 51 incidents of anti-Hindu violence in the period following Hadi’s death alone. Such incidents underscore the vulnerability of the Hindu minority amid rising communal hostility and the weaponisation of religious accusations. Reports further indicated that posters and written materials calling for the extermination of Hindus were displayed in public spaces, signalling an alarming normalisation of genocidal rhetoric. When combined with acts of arson, vandalism, assault, and targeted intimidation, these developments suggest a coordinated environment of hostility aimed at terrorising the Hindu community and reinforcing majoritarian dominance.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Attack not resulting in death". The sub-category for 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 for this case is "Hate speech against Hindus". The sub-category here is "Violent threats". Violent threats, explicit, implicit or implied, is the most dangerous form of hate speech since it goes beyond discriminatory and prejudicial language to express the intent of causing harm to an individual or a group of people based on their religious identity and faith. There could be several different kinds of threats that are issued to Hindus based on religious animosity. An explicit threat would mean the direct threat of violence towards an individual Hindu, a group of Hindus or Hindus at large. Physical violence, death threats, threats of destruction of property belonging to Hindus and threats of genocide would mean explicit threats against Hindus for their religious identity. Implicit threats may not be a direct threat but implied through the use of symbols of actions – for example – in the Nupur Sharma case, other than explicit threats, there were also implicit threats when Islamists took to the streets to burn and beat her effigies. It implies that they want to do the same to Nupur Sharma – thereby is considered an implicit threat. Violent threats can be delivered in person, through letters, phone calls, graffiti, or increasingly through social media and other online platforms. It would be important to understand that a threat – explicit or implicit, online or offline – to an individual who happens to be a Hindu does not qualify as a religiously motivated threat. Such a threat, while vile and dangerous, could be owing to non-religious reasons and/or personal animosity. To qualify as a religiously motivated threat, it would need to exhibit an indication that the individual is being targeted for religious reasons and/or owing to his/her religious identity as a Hindu. This case qualifies as a hate crime because four members of the Hindu Ray family in Sylhet were subjected to a coordinated two-hour assault by a group of Jamaat e Islami-affiliated Muslim men, during which explicit communal declarations were made that Hindus in a Muslim-majority country had no right to basic human dignity. What began as a minor objection over property damage was rapidly transformed into organised communal violence targeting a Hindu household. The religious motive was made explicit during the attack. The perpetrators openly invoked the victims’ Hindu identity as the basis for denying them dignity and equal standing. These statements were delivered while physically assaulting the family, establishing that the violence was not personal or spontaneous but rooted in religious hostility. The assault was framed as punishment for being Hindu. The attack was structured and deliberate. The perpetrators arrived together after Iftar, stormed the Ray residence, extended violence to neighbouring Hindu homes, and continued the assault for nearly two hours. The coordinated mobilisation and expansion of violence beyond one household demonstrates intent to intimidate the wider Hindu community rather than resolve a private dispute. Targeting multiple Hindu homes reinforced the message of collective vulnerability. The combination of sustained physical violence and communal degradation was designed to instil fear and signal subordination. This was not an isolated altercation but an assertion of religious dominance directed at a minority community within a Muslim majority environment. When explicit anti-Hindu rhetoric accompanies organised mob violence against clearly identifiable Hindu households, the religious motive is unambiguous. The Ray family was attacked because of their Hindu identity, and the assault aligns with an ongoing pattern of anti-Hindu targeting in Bangladesh. The elements of coordinated action, communal hate speech, and deliberate intimidation meet the threshold of a religiously motivated hate crime, warranting its inclusion in the tracker. Disclaimer: Six perpetrators have been confirmed and named in this case, namely Sunam Ahmad, Akhtar Ahmad, Siraj Ahmad, Enam Ahmad, Khusrau, and Rumel Mia. However, the sources indicate that a group of individuals carried out the two-hour attack, suggesting that additional unidentified perpetrators may have been involved beyond the six named in the complaint. For documentation purposes, the perpetrator count has been recorded as six based on the confirmed names available in the sources.