IAMC Weekly India Human Rights Monitor (August 14, 2026)

This Week at a Glance 

This week, over 40 Canadian groups urged Ottawa to deny entry to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, while rights groups there sought sanctions against Yogi Adityanath. New tracker data recorded 25 Muslims killed in hate crimes between May and July, putting 2026 on course to be the deadliest year on record. In Uttar Pradesh, a young Muslim driver died after being beaten by Hindu pilgrims and was himself booked for attempted murder. Bengaluru police detained hundreds of Bengali Muslim migrant workers, and another West Bengal woman was pushed into Bangladesh despite holding Indian documents. In Chhattisgarh, tribal Christians were driven from their village and a Christian leader was jailed over a Facebook comment, while courts acquitted all 40 accused in the Dangawas Dalit massacre and dropped a Muzaffarnagar riots case against 25 BJP leaders.

 

Top Stories

Canadian groups urge Ottawa to bar RSS chief, seek sanctions against Adityanath

More than 40 Canadian civil society, human rights, labour and faith-based organisations have urged Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree to deny entry to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat ahead of his planned visit from August 31 to September 1, warning that his presence poses public safety and national security risks.Canadian rights groups have separately sought targeted sanctions against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other officials over alleged abuses against Muslims in the state.

 

 

25 Muslims killed in hate crimes between May and July, 15 by state actors

At least 25 Muslims were killed in India between May and July 2026 in anti-Muslim hate crimes, 15 of them attributed to police and security personnel and 10 to Hindu extremist assailants, according to the South Asia Justice Campaign’s India Persecution Tracker. The victims included an 11-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. The report also recorded more than 1,000 Muslim homes, businesses and religious structures demolished across eight states.

 

 

Muslim driver beaten to death by kanwariyas, then booked for attempted murder

Azeem Ali, a 24-year-old truck driver from Moradabad, died days after he was dragged from his vehicle and beaten by a group of Hindu pilgrims in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur following a collision with an auto-rickshaw carrying pilgrims. A video shows the assault taking place in the presence of a police officer, and two have since been arrested. Police also registered a counter-FIR against Azeem himself.

 

 

 

Hundreds of Bengali Muslim workers detained in Bengaluru as another woman is pushed into Bangladesh

Bengaluru police detained hundreds of people, by activists’ count around 900 including children and the elderly, in a pre-dawn drive to identify alleged Bangladeshi nationals, while West Bengal lawmakers have raised alarm over the profiling of Bengali-speaking workers. Separately, Sahida Fakir, a 40-year-old woman, was pushed into Bangladesh after being picked up in Navi Mumbai despite her family producing her birth certificate, voter ID and land records, and remains stranded in Satkhira while her husband and two sons remain in India.

 

 

Tribal Christians driven from Chhattisgarh village; Christian leader jailed over Facebook comment

Tribal Christian families from Chitalnar village in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district were assaulted and forced from their homes after a mob attacked around ten families during a reconversion campaign. Activists attribute the campaign to an RSS-affiliated group that campaigns to strip Scheduled Tribe benefits from Adivasis who convert to Christianity or Islam. Separately, Arun Pannalal, the 75-year-old president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, was arrested over a Facebook comment.

 

 

Courts acquit all 40 accused in Dangawas Dalit massacre, drop Muzaffarnagar riots case

A special court in Rajasthan’s Nagaur district acquitted all 40 accused in the 2015 Dangawas massacre, in which five Dalits were killed during a land dispute. In Uttar Pradesh, a special court in Muzaffarnagar allowed the state government to withdraw a case against 25 BJP and Hindu extremist leaders, including Yati Narsinghanand, over speeches at a 2013 rally alleged to have incited communal violence that left over 60 people dead and displaced over 40,000, mostly Muslims.

 

 

Hate crimes and discrimination in India

This week, Meta restricted access in India to an Instagram post carrying a report on Insha Mushtaq, the Kashmiri schoolgirl blinded by pellets in 2016. In Delhi, police forced the cancellation of an Independence Day address on pluralism by JNU Professor Emerita Zoya Hasan after VHP members gathered outside the school; Delhi University separately dropped its long-running postgraduate paper on the Delhi Sultanate from a newly notified syllabus. Along Kanwar Yatra routes in Uttar Pradesh, a Muslim man’s biryani shop was demolished and its owner detained after a Bajrang Dal complaint, police in Bareilly detained four people in raids on two eateries, an FIR was filed against All India Imam Association president Maulana Sajid Rashidi for criticising assaults by kanwariyas, and an elderly Muslim man was beaten in Ghaziabad for carrying chicken.

 

Resistance & Organizing

Courts push back on prolonged UAPA detention

The Supreme Court criticised Karnataka’s prosecution plan in a Popular Front of India (PFI)-related UAPA case as absurd, telling the state it cannot prolong a trial for years while an accused languishes in jail. Days earlier, the Allahabad High Court granted bail to Kerala natives Ansad Badruddin and Firoz Khan, jailed since February 2021, holding that prolonged incarceration with no prospect of an early verdict engages the Article 21 right to a speedy trial even under the UAPA.

 

 

 

Jamiat marches in Kolkata after High Court overturns police refusal

The West Bengal unit of Jamiat-e-Ulema marched against large-scale voter deletions during the Special Intensive Revision and the removal of loudspeakers from mosques, after the Calcutta High Court permitted the rally and overturned Kolkata Police’s refusal.

 

 

 

 

 

Defender of the Week

This week, we’re spotlighting Yashwant Sahdev Shinde, a former full-time RSS member who has spent more than a decade campaigning to hold the Sangh Parivar accountable for a string of bomb blasts in the 2000s. In a sworn affidavit before a special CBI court in Nanded in 2022, he stated that he had attended meetings where RSS and VHP members planned a series of blasts and that he was given bomb-making training in 2003; his bid to become a prosecution witness was rejected, and the Nanded, Malegaon and Samjhauta Express cases all ended in acquittals. Earlier this month, Shinde wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge demanding that the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal be declared terrorist organisations, and that Mohan Bhagwat, Indresh Kumar and VHP general secretary Milind Parande be arrested and investigated.

 

IAMC in Action

• IAMC chapters across the country are gearing up for India Independence Day activities, with programming planned around the theme of freedom, democracy, and the constitutional promise.