Property of Hindu man grabbed by Muslim goon amid ongoing persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh

Case ID : e27524a | Location : Gazipur District, Bangladesh | Date of Incident : Wed, 27 August, 2025

Case ID : e27524a

Gazipur District, Bangladesh

27 August, 2025

Property of Hindu man grabbed by Muslim goon amid ongoing persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Attacked to induce migration from non-Hindu dominated area

Case Summary

A Hindu man named Manik Saha was dispossessed of his ancestral land in Sreepur Upazila of Gazipur district, Bangladesh. A local Muslim strongman named Khokon, the eldest son of one Muslimuddin Master, took over the property through staged encroachments. He first planted saplings on the land, then banana stumps, and later began removing soil, all despite repeated objections by Manik Saha. The victim pleaded for the harassment to end, but was ignored. When confronted, Khokon initially admitted that the land belonged to Manik Saha, but later resorted to denial and demanded documents while blaming the victim himself. This case followed a series of similar encroachments in Bangladesh, after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government on 5 August 2024. This case serves as a stark reminder of the growing Muslim extremism and anti-Hindu sentiments in Bangladesh, which have 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.’

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory under this 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. Another subcategory under this is: Attacked to induce migration from non-Hindu dominated area. There have been cases where the Hindus living in an area, often with a majority dwelling belonging to non-Hindus or those harbouring animosity towards the Hindu faith, the Hindu residents experience threats and violence. The violence is employed with the aim of making the Hindus leave the area and relocate, so the area could be turned into an exclusive ghetto for adherents of the non-Hindu faith or those who harbour animosity towards the Hindu faith. In several cases, the aim of the exodus is explicit. However, in several cases, the demand for the exodus of Hindu residents is not explicit; however, violence by non-Hindu residents leaves the Hindu residents no option but to leave the area, thereby turning the area into an exclusive ghetto of non-Hindu residents. In such cases, there are instances of violence against the Hindu residents explicitly. For example, in the Hauz Qazi case of 2019, the Muslim residents claimed that mob violence against the Hindu residents had been triggered by a parking dispute. However, the violence did turn religious, with a temple being desecrated and directed specifically against the Hindu residents. The Hindu residents of the area were clear that the violence was religiously motivated, and one of the motives was to affect an exodus of the Hindu residents. In such cases, even though the perpetrators have not explicitly expressed the aim of affecting exodus, the given circumstances and violence and precedent point to the intention of exodus and therefore would be categorised under this sub-category. Such crimes are religiously motivated and therefore are hate crimes. The dispossession of Manik Saha from his ancestral land in Gazipur cannot be seen as a simple quarrel over property boundaries. While there remains the possibility that the encroachment was carried out as a plain land dispute, the context indicates a more disturbing possibility of targeting Saha for his Hindu identity. Given the circumstances in Bangladesh since the political upheaval of 5 August 2024, such dispossessions cannot be divorced from the broader wave of anti-Hindu aggression. Hindu families have faced arson, temple destruction, abduction of women, and forced resignations of teachers and officials. Reports also highlight how Hindus are being coerced into joining Islamist groups or abandoning their homes. In this setting, even disputes over property acquire a communal dimension, as Hindus are especially vulnerable and often targeted precisely because of their religious identity. Because there is a clear pattern across Bangladesh of Hindus being systematically dispossessed of land and forced to migrate, this case has been included in the Hinduphobia Tracker as a hate crime. When an ethnic cleansing unfolds on the basis of religious identity, every act of violence against the targeted group must be understood within that wider context. Even if a particular crime does not display an explicit religious marker, the climate of dehumanisation and the normalisation of hostility towards the community make religious animosity the underlying driver. For documenting the 2024 ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh, the Hinduphobia Tracker applies the principle of presuming religious motivation ab initio. Should any case be conclusively demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have been motivated solely by non-religious factors, it will subsequently be removed from the hate crime database. This method ensures that the systematic and faith-based nature of the persecution is neither minimised nor obscured under claims of ambiguity. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date on which the ordeal of the victim began. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media.