IAMC Weekly India Human Rights Monitor (October 22, 2026)
This Week at a Glance
This week, Assam evicted more than 1,100 mostly Bengali Muslim families and razed over 10 mosques, while in Delhi a mosque near the Prime Minister’s residence was cut off from water and power and ordered vacated. In Haryana, the family of Mohammad Shahid, shot dead by police who claim he fired first, called his death murder. New data showed 80% of rejected voter appeals in West Bengal’s electoral roll revision carried Muslim names. Members of a Hindu militant group beat Muslim students at a festival dance in Bhopal, and Gujarat police paraded Muslim youths in ropes. Elsewhere, Christians, Islamic schools, and student activists faced attacks and restrictions.
Top Stories
Assam evicts more than 1,100 Muslim families and razes over 10 mosques
Assam’s BJP government evicted more than 1,100 mostly Bengali Muslim families from forest land in Nagaon, Golaghat, and Hojai districts in a two-day drive, demolishing more than 10 mosques, some over 50 years old. Resident Abdul Noor, 44, said the government itself had settled landless families there in 1974.
Delhi mosque near the Prime Minister’s residence cut off and ordered vacated
Authorities cut electricity and water to Delhi’s Race Course mosque, registered as a Muslim religious endowment since 1977, during a demolition drive that displaced more than 700 families from nearby slums. A government order now directs the imam to vacate within six days, and security personnel initially blocked worshippers from entering.
Family says Muslim man killed by Haryana police was murdered
Haryana police shot dead 27-year-old Mohammad Shahid in Nuh district on October 15, claiming he opened fire on officers pursuing him over cattle smuggling. His brother Wahid told a magisterial inquiry that men from his own village murdered him, and villagers called the police account fake and demanded an impartial high-level probe.
Muslims bear the brunt of West Bengal’s voter purge
In West Bengal’s revision of electoral rolls, 80.2% of the 6,444 voters whose appeals for reinstatement were rejected had Muslim names, a Wire analysis found, in seats where minorities make up about 22% of the roll. The Election Commission is also seeking to strike off 1.48 million voters whom judges had already cleared.
Muslims assaulted, threatened, and paraded during Hindu festival celebrations
In Bhopal, members of the Hindu militant group Bajrang Dal allegedly ordered Muslims to leave a university festival dance and beat up a 24-year-old Muslim law student, yet police filed a case against the student. In Gujarat’s Songadh, police paraded nine detained Muslim youths through the streets tied with ropes, and in Jaipur, Muslim performer Javed Khan cancelled his festival shows after threats from a Hindu extremist group.
Hate crimes and discrimination in India
This week, in Hyderabad, two Muslim electricians were hospitalised after men allegedly demanded they chant a Hindu religious slogan and beat them with sticks. In Jharkhand’s Khunti, Catholic school principal Father Benedict Barla was left critically injured after masked men entered his school. In West Bengal, three Christian families alleged they were beaten and pressured to renounce their faith. In Uttar Pradesh, two Christian men were jailed under the state’s anti-conversion law for praying for a sick Hindu man at his request. Uttarakhand scrapped the Friday weekly holiday, the day of congregational prayer, at recognised Islamic schools. In Kerala, police booked around 15 student activists on a riot charge over an allegedly trampled photo of Modi. Actor Imran Khan challenged an order to leave India issued after he joined a protest against the Chief Election Commissioner. At the UN, India dismissed calls by more than 20 UN human rights experts for an independent probe into its crackdown on protesters.
Resistance & Organizing
Diaspora rallies across three continents demand an end to the voter purge
Diaspora groups, including the Indian American Muslim Council, held protests in New York, Washington, DC, Fremont, Atlanta, Sydney, and Melbourne, demanding a halt to the electoral roll revision, restoration of deleted names, and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation. In Dublin, more than 70 people gathered as part of the “Jantar Mantar is Everywhere” campaign, named after Delhi’s shuttered protest site and joined by groups in seven European countries.
IAMC in Action
IAMC condemned a foiled mass shooting plot at a Hindu temple in Aurora, Illinois, where a 19-year-old allegedly arrived with a rifle and body armor, five months after two gunmen killed three people at the Islamic Center of San Diego. IAMC urged hate crime charges, federal investigation of online radicalisation networks, expanded security funding for houses of worship, and an end to anti-Muslim, anti-Indian, and anti-South Asian rhetoric by elected officials. Read our statement here.
