IAMC Weekly India Human Rights Monitor (September 10, 2026)

This Week at a Glance 

This week, officials in Uttar Pradesh bulldozed a century-old mosque in Saharanpur, while 73 homes were razed in Assam’s Muslim-majority Goalpara. A 66-year-old Bengali Muslim labourer remained jailed as a “Bangladeshi,” and 23 Bengali migrant workers were detained in Chhattisgarh. Voter-roll purges deepened, with a BJP agent in Jharkhand accused of seeking to delete some 200 Muslim voters. Journalist Huda Zariwala was jailed for criticising the Saharanpur demolition, a UN watchdog raised grave concerns over abuses against India’s minorities, and a report documented 120 Islamophobic broadcasts on Malayalam television. Elsewhere, a BJP lawmaker called for a missile strike on a Muslim neighbourhood, Uttarakhand shut more madrasas, and Christians in West Bengal faced a string of attacks.

 

Top Stories

Century-old mosque razed at dawn in Saharanpur, 73 Muslim homes demolished in Assam

Officials in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur demolished a mosque at around 5 AM, a day after a district court dismissed the mosque committee’s appeal against eviction, leaving it no time to approach a higher court. The committee says the mosque predates 1911 and is registered as waqf property, and opposition leaders condemned the demolition. In Assam’s Goalpara district, officials razed 73 homes in Muslim-majority Krishnai, with residents insisting they held documents proving ownership of the land.

 

 

Bengali-speaking Muslims jailed and detained as “Bangladeshis”

Jalil Akhtar, a 66-year-old Muslim farm labourer from West Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur district, has been jailed for nearly three months as an alleged Bangladeshi, despite holding a voter ID and an Aadhaar national ID card, appearing on the 2002 voter list, and voting in this year’s state election. In Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur, police detained 23 migrant hawkers from Murshidabad — 22 of them Muslims, two reportedly minors — on suspicion of being Bangladeshi, and their families say they have not been reachable since.

 

 

BJP agent accused of targeting Muslim voters as roll exclusions mount

In Jharkhand’s Godda district, a BJP booth-level agent was arrested and released on bail within hours after being accused of filing about 200 applications to delete voters at a single booth, all of them allegedly Muslim. In Maharashtra, nearly 30% of voters — more than 3.7 million people — were excluded from draft rolls in 38 constituencies with significant Muslim populations, well above the 21.1% statewide rate.

 

 

 

Journalist jailed for criticising Saharanpur mosque demolition

Uttar Pradesh police arrested journalist and activist Huda Zariwala in Saharanpur after a video surfaced in which she condemned the mosque demolition as criminal and criticized Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. She was detained while trying to protest at the city’s Circuit House and sent to jail under preventive breach-of-peace provisions.

 

 

 

UN anti-racism watchdog flags grave abuses against India’s minorities

In its first review of India in 19 years, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said it was gravely concerned by reports of extrajudicial killings, torture, and sexual violence by law enforcement against Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims. The committee urged India to suspend the National Register of Citizens, independently investigate the ongoing voter-roll revision, and criminalise hate speech and hate crimes.

 

 

 

 

Report flags Islamophobia on Malayalam TV; Muslim leader booked for criticizing anchor

An Islamophobia Watch report documented 120 Islamophobic presentations on Malayalam news channels over nearly 1,000 days, implicating even mainstream outlets such as Asianet News, Manorama News, and Mathrubhumi News. Separately, Kerala police booked Abdulla Basil CP, a community leader, after he criticized a Big TV editor’s on-air remarks about the Muslim community.

 

 

 

 

Hate crimes and discrimination in India

This week, in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi, a Muslim bag seller was harassed and forced to chant “Jai Sri Ram.” In Bhopal, BJP legislator Rameshwar Sharma told a public gathering that a missile should be fired at a Muslim-majority neighbourhood. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari announced plans to open 1,000 schools run by the RSS’s education wing within a year. In Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, police filed a case against a Muslim opposition leader for offering prayers beside his parked car at a government guest house. Uttarakhand shut five more madrasas, bringing closures to 20. In Meerut, police shot a Muslim man in the leg in what they described as an “encounter” over alleged cow slaughter. The Enforcement Directorate froze bank accounts of the Urdu daily Akhbar-e-Mashriq holding roughly $600,000. In West Bengal, Christians faced a string of attacks through August.

 

Resistance & Organizing

Citizens’ collective demands rollback of Delhi voter-roll revision

A citizens’ collective has called for the Special Intensive Revision of Delhi’s electoral rolls to be rolled back, describing it as a fraud on democracy after the draft roll left out 5.86 million voters compared with 2025. Delhi’s draft roll now lists about 9.75 million electors, down from 15.6 million in January 2025, and those excluded have until September 30 to file claims.

 

 

 

 

Gauhati High Court orders compensation for women expelled to Bangladesh

In a first, the Gauhati High Court ordered the Assam government to pay interim compensation of about $2,300 each to the families of two Bengali-origin Muslim women, who were pushed into Bangladesh before they could challenge their foreigner declarations. The court found that a Foreigners Tribunal had wilfully delayed issuing its orders so the women could be removed, and directed the Ministry of External Affairs to help locate them and bring them back.

 

 

Defender of the Week

This week, we’re spotlighting Sanjiv Bhatt, the former Indian Police Service officer and whistleblower who marked eight years behind bars on September 5, 2026. In 2011, Bhatt submitted an affidavit alleging that then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was complicit in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat; he was suspended from service that year and dismissed in 2015. Imprisoned since September 2018, he is serving a life sentence following a conviction in a 1990 custodial death case, and in 2024 was sentenced to a further 20 years in a 1996 drug-planting case, prosecutions that his family, supporters, and rights groups in India and around the world maintain are politically motivated.

 

IAMC in Action

• IAMC took part in the 63rd Annual ISNA Convention, held September 4–7, 2026, at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan. IAMC’s Michigan team met attendees, shared the organisation’s grassroots work, and invited them to join efforts to challenge Hindutva and promote democratic values.