IAMC Weekly India Human Rights Monitor (November 7, 2026)
This Week at a Glance
This week, bulldozers left more than 4,000 Bengali Muslims homeless in Assam’s Dhubri district, and Uttarakhand razed 86 homes in a Muslim village. Mobs attacked a church inauguration and a prayer meeting in West Bengal, and a man slapped two young Christian women in Telangana. Human Rights Watch found that India’s voter roll revision has fallen hardest on Muslims, as Delhi officials were told to make voters prove they are not “Bangladeshi.” The Union government asked a court to remove a century-old Delhi mosque. Elsewhere, Muslim traders were booked after being beaten, and a driver was harassed for speaking Bengali.
Top Stories
Bulldozers leave thousands of Muslims homeless in Assam and Uttarakhand
Officials in Assam used about 50 excavators to demolish the homes of over 640 Bengali Muslim families in Dhubri, leaving more than 4,000 people homeless, including an 80-year-old Muslim man, who has lived there since 1962. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma then posted a video of the ruins captioned “Encroachers in Dhubri – It’s done bro!”, less than a fortnight after more than 1,100 Muslim families were evicted in Nagaon, Hojai, and Golaghat. In Uttarakhand, 86 houses were razed in the Muslim settlement of Puchhadi.
Christians attacked at a church inauguration and a prayer meeting
In Basanti, West Bengal, around 35 people attacked priests and worshippers at a church inauguration, vandalizing a cross and smashing phones. The next day in Malda, Hindu militants from the Bajrang Dal disrupted a Christian prayer meeting, vandalising property and assaulting those present. In Telangana, a video showed a man repeatedly slapping two Christian women, believed to be minors, over conversion allegations, and police have not yet filed a case.
Human Rights Watch says voter purge is arbitrary and singles out Muslims
After interviewing 70 people in Delhi, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, Human Rights Watch found that India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which has struck over 130 million names from voter rolls, is arbitrary and deeply flawed.Deleted voters are being denied passports, scholarships, and welfare and treated as suspected undocumented migrants, which HRW linked to the unlawful expulsion of Bengali Muslims to Bangladesh, and the group urged authorities to scrap the revision and end the crackdown on protesters.
Government seeks removal of century-old Delhi mosque, Mumbai prayer room razed
The federal government told the Delhi High Court that the century-old Qadeemi Masjid must be removed for the Central Vista project (the government’s rebuilding of central Delhi), calling a religious structure on its land “incompatible with the secular character of Government property.” In Mumbai, a prayer room at a shopping mall was reportedly demolished after a Hindu extremist group circulated a video of two girls in hijabs praying there.
Hate crimes and discrimination in India
This week, Madhya Pradesh police arrested two men for tying up and beating three Muslim buffalo traders in Damoh, but also booked the victims for animal cruelty. At a toll plaza in Murshidabad, West Bengal, an employee harassed a Muslim truck driver for speaking Bengali, asking, “Are you Bangladeshi?” India’s financial crimes agency, the Enforcement Directorate, arrested veteran Muslim politician Azam Khan outside a Rampur jail minutes after his release on bail, ending nearly 11 months in custody with a fresh arrest, and Khan called it “the punishment for being a Muslim.” The Delhi government approved contempt proceedings against activist Ratna Singh over posts criticising a judge who rejected her complaint about police detention at an anti-SIR protest.
Resistance & Organizing
Christians testify at Kolkata people’s tribunal
The rights group Karwan-e-Mohabbat held a people’s tribunal in Kolkata to record testimony from Christians across West Bengal. They described assaults, vandalism, conversion accusations, raids on prayer gatherings in their homes, and threats of social boycott.
Gujarat Muslim group demands action on highway extortion and police abuse
The Minority Coordination Committee (MCC) Gujarat petitioned the state police chief over groups that extort and beat livestock transporters on the state’s highways, and over police parading and beating accused people in public. The group demanded criminal cases against the attackers, independent inquiries into the police abuse, and a written report on the action taken within a set deadline.
Voices from the Ground
“Indian authorities first stripped millions of citizens of their right to vote and are now beating and jailing them for peacefully protesting these rights violations”
- Elaine Pearson, Asia director, Human Rights Watch
