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

This Week at a Glance 

This week, gunmen in Uttar Pradesh killed Mohammad Sharif shortly after police summoned him, a year after a court cleared him of terrorism charges. Two rights trackers found that 2026 is the deadliest year for Indian Muslims since 2022. Authorities razed a mosque in Sambhal under heavy police guard. New data showed Muslims overwhelmingly targeted in voter roll purges in West Bengal and Karnataka. A state minister called two Muslim universities “terror hubs.” Elsewhere, a Muslim truck worker was beaten in Jammu, a Muslim couple was assaulted on a bus in Karnataka, and a church shrine was vandalised in West Bengal.

 

Top Stories

Muslim man cleared of terror charges shot dead after police summons

Gunmen shot dead 52-year-old Mohammad Sharif in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, shortly after he left a police station where officers had summoned him. A High Court had acquitted him in 2025 of a 2008 attack on a paramilitary camp after he spent more than 17 years in custody, ruling that the prosecution had “miserably failed to prove the case against the accused for the principal offence beyond reasonable doubt.”

 

 

Rights trackers record the deadliest year for Indian Muslims since 2022

The Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) documented 322 hate crimes against Muslims and Christians in the first nine months of 2026, leaving 54 dead, 21 of them killed by state authorities in staged police shootings or in custody. It also recorded 83 hate speeches, 33 of them by public office holders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and found that only one incident led to an arrest. A separate tracker by South Asia Justice Campaign found that at least 27 Muslims have been killed in 2026, the highest toll since it began collecting data in 2022.

 

Authorities raze a mosque in Sambhal under heavy police guard

Authorities in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, demolished a village mosque, deploying police from across the district, armed units, and drones. Officials said it was built without permission on Waqf land (property endowed for Muslim religious or charitable use). Sambhal has seen repeated action against mosques since a court-ordered survey of its historic Shahi Jama Masjid led to deadly police firing in 2024.

 

 

 

Data shows Muslims targeted in voter purges as court narrows proof of citizenship

In West Bengal, 89.5% of the voters the Election Commission challenged after judges had cleared them have Muslim names, according to an analysis by The Wire of India’s nationwide voter roll revision. In Karnataka, a Muslim community federation found that over 880,000 Muslim voters were deleted, with deletion rates higher in seats held by Muslim legislators than across the state.

 

 

Hate crimes and discrimination in India

This week, armed men attacked a Muslim truck worker and two others in Jammu and Kashmir. In Karnataka, a state bus conductor abused and allegedly assaulted a Muslim couple who boarded the wrong bus. Uttar Pradesh minister Raghuraj Singh called Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia, two of India’s leading Muslim-founded universities, “hotbeds of terrorism,” and said he would shut both if he could. In West Bengal, miscreants vandalised and uprooted a shrine to the Virgin Mary outside a church. Kashmir’s chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq remained under house arrest and was barred from leading Friday prayers for a second week, after citing an International Crisis Group report in a sermon. India cancelled the visa of Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng Svendsen, who had questioned Modi in Oslo in May, minutes before she was due to fly to India to speak on press freedom.

 

Resistance & Organizing

Kashmir court acquits two young men jailed six years under UAPA

A court in Kashmir acquitted Huzaif Firdous Bhat and Ajaz Ahmad Bhat, jailed since 2020 under UAPA, India’s draconian anti-terror law, finding that police had not proved they recovered weapons from the men. The court ruled that “the prosecution must travel the entire distance from suspicion to legal proof” and ordered their immediate release.

 

 

Courts reject cow cases against Muslim men

A court in Uttar Pradesh acquitted two Muslim men of cow slaughter and attacking police in a 12-year-old case, noting that no officer was injured and that the allegations could have been fabricated. The state’s High Court separately ruled that no permit is needed to move cattle within Uttar Pradesh, overturning the seizure of a cattle transporter’s vehicle.

 

 

 

IAMC in Action

• IAMC condemned far-right activists for disrupting a Diwali celebration in Seattle with signs demanding the deportation of Indians, and urged authorities to protect upcoming events. Read our statement here.
• IAMC published its September- October newsletter, covering chapter protests across the US against India’s voter erasure, Columbia Law School’s cancellation of a lecture by India’s Solicitor General, and IAMC’s annual banquets. Read it here.