Dalit Hindu rickshaw driver brutally assaulted and subjected to casteist abuse by group of Muslim men

Case ID : e274d8c | Location : Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 27 May, 2025

Case ID : e274d8c

Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India

27 May, 2025

Dalit Hindu rickshaw driver brutally assaulted and subjected to casteist abuse by group of Muslim men

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Case Summary

In Bhavnagar, Gujarat, a Dalit Hindu rickshaw driver named Rahulbhai Gautambhai Dulera was brutally assaulted and hurled casteist abuse by a group of Muslim men. According to reports, the attack took place in the Vadva Nera area near Vasan Ghat when the victim was ferrying a passenger from Gangajaliya Lake to the Kumbharwada area. As he entered the area, he was stopped by four Muslim men named Sakilbaba, Faizan, Mastan, and an unidentified person. They forcibly pulled him out of his rickshaw by his feet and violently assaulted him. They hurled caste-based abuses at him, told him not to drive in that locality, and then launched a brutal assault using iron rods, pipes, and sticks. The victim was subjected to over 35 blows, sustaining serious injuries, before the attackers fled the scene. An FIR was registered under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act by the police. At the time of writing this report, the investigation was ongoing.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: - Attack not resulting in death. Within it, 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. The other primary category selected is - Hate Speech against Hindus. The other 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. This case has been added to the tracker because a Dalit Hindu man was brutally assaulted and hurled casteist abuse by a group of Muslim men, without any sort of provocation whatsoever. The attack was unprovoked, and the Hindu victim had done nothing which could be branded as provocation leading to the violence by the Muslim men. The unprovoked attack was driven by intrinsic and doctrinal religious animosity, which also stemmed from the fact that the Hindu man belonged to the Dalit section of the Hindu society. The fact that the attack was accompanied by casteist slurs further shows the multi-layered nature of the hatred. It may be argued that a caste-specific slur is aimed at his micro identity of belonging to the Dalit section of the Hindu community and not his Hindu identity itself. However, as far as Abrahamic religions are concerned, the micro identities of caste, region, and language are secondary. It is the religious identity that drives the animosity of the perpetrator against the Hindu victim. In this case, the Muslim mob hurled caste abuses at the victim because of the animosity towards Hinduism and Hindus. The fact that caste slurs were hurled at the victim, to further humiliate and dehumanise him, by the perpetrator, makes it a significant case of religiously motivated hate crime against the victim. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that the report does not specify the exact date when the victim was attacked. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media.