Hyderabad: As Ramzan drew to a close and Ramnavami processions filled the streets, hate crimes surged across India, targeting Dalits, Christians and Muslims in incidents that ranged from vigilante killings to police brutality to a 65-year-old woman being forced to drink alcohol while she fasted. At least 58 such crimes were recorded in March 2026 alone, according to data we compiled by Siasat.com.
The number is a slight dip from February, but the brutality has not softened.
With Ramzan ending on Eid-ul-Fitr on March 21 and Ramnavami falling on March 29, the calendar offered little respite.
Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest concentration of incidents (9), followed by Telangana (6), with poll-bound West Bengal emerging as a flashpoint of a different kind – one where the Supreme Court itself described the state as the most “polarised” in the country.
There, the violence was less visible but no less corrosive, with Muslim voter names quietly deleted en masse during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of the electoral rolls.
Elsewhere, the violence was anything but quiet. A young Muslim man named Aamir, who drove a vegetable produce truck, was shot dead by cow vigilantes on suspicion of illegally smuggling cattle.
In Maharashtra, a theatre crowd watching the propaganda film “The Kerala Story 2” took a public pledge to socially and economically boycott Muslims, part of a broader wave of attacks and boycotts tied to the “love jihad” conspiracy theory that the film amplified.
On Ramnavami, some processions featured dismembered body parts placed inside refrigerators as explicit warnings to Hindu women about the same conspiracy.
In one week, at least four people were killed, with all from different age groups and all from the same community.
In Delhi, a Dalit man was allegedly killed simply for wishing someone Happy Holi.
Christians, though fewer in number among the targeted, were subjected to forced religious chanting and accused of orchestrating conversions. In one case, a Hindutva man publicly abused a Christian minor and forced the child to shout “Jai Shri Ram.”
The brutality extended across ages and genders. A 13-year-old Muslim boy was shot point-blank by his own friends at his birthday party. A 17-year-old in Bengaluru was harassed, assaulted and kidnapped by Bajrang Dal members, and nearly took his own life before his family intervened.
In one of the most sensational cases of violence committed against women, Roshan Khatoon, 65, was forced to drink a toxic mix of alcohol and water in Bihar, while she was fasting for Ramzan.
Police were frequently implicated, not as bystanders but as participants. A Dalit woman was dragged by her hair by Delhi officers after she resisted her son’s unlawful arrest.
The Sambhal Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) told Muslims grieving Iran’s Supreme Leader to simply leave for Iran. In Uttam Nagar, Muslim homes were bulldozed following a Holi clash. Meerut’s Senior Superintendent of Police Avinash Pandey warned that anyone found praying namaz outside a mosque would have their passport cancelled.
The US-Israel war on Iran and Lebanon, which began on February 28, poured fuel onto an already volatile atmosphere. Anti-Muslim rhetoric spiked across social media and spilled into workplaces and classrooms – a Mahindra employee’s Islamophobic LinkedIn post drew widespread condemnation, and a college student was called a terrorist by his professor simply for asking to step out of class.
The pattern that emerges from March’s data is not one of isolated incidents. It is systemic, it is accelerating and it is targeting the most vulnerable – the young, the elderly and the devout.
This post was last modified on April 20, 2026 2:17 pm