A report released by the India Persecution Tracker has documented an increase in anti-Muslim violence, arrests and hate speech across India during the first four months of 2026, recording at least 13 killings linked to religiously motivated attacks in eight states.
According to the tracker, those killed included two women, a 15-year-old boy and a 65-year-old man. The report also recorded the suicide of the wife of a lynching victim, describing it as linked to the trauma caused by the attack.
Bihar reported the highest number of fatalities with four killings and one related suicide, followed by Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.
The report further stated that four Muslims were killed in incidents involving state authorities. These included two Muslim brothers shot dead in separate police “encounters” in Uttar Pradesh within 48 hours of each other, shortly after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath publicly called for strict action in the case linked to their pursuit.
In Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim man was allegedly killed by the Indian Army during what the report described as a disputed encounter, while another man reportedly died in police custody in Delhi amid allegations of torture.
The tracker also highlighted what it called the growing criminalisation of ordinary Muslim religious practices. More than 40 Muslims were reportedly arrested for activities related to Ramadan observance and prayer gatherings.
Among the incidents cited were the arrests of 12 men in Mohammadganj village in Uttar Pradesh for offering Friday prayers in a vacant house after a video of the gathering circulated online. During Ramadan, 14 Muslim youths were also detained after breaking their fast aboard a boat on the Ganga river following a complaint by a local Bharatiya Janata Party leader alleging that they consumed chicken biryani and threw leftovers into the river.
The report claimed that over 56 million voters were removed from electoral rolls across 13 states through the Special Intensive Revision process, with Muslims disproportionately affected. In West Bengal, the tracker said Muslims accounted for 34 percent of deleted voters, while exclusions in some constituencies reached as high as 95 percent.
The report also pointed to a rise in hate speech by senior political leaders. It stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the term “ghuspaithiya” (infiltrator) in multiple speeches between January and February, including at election rallies and in Parliament.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah was also cited for speeches linking voter roll purges with the removal of alleged infiltrators.
According to the tracker, the strongest rhetoric came from Himanta Biswa Sarma, who reportedly said the voter revision process specifically targeted Bengali-speaking Muslims. The report further noted that the BJP Assam social media account shared an AI-generated video showing Sarma shooting Muslims, accompanied by captions referring to a “foreigner-free Assam.”
The tracker additionally noted renewed inter-ethnic violence in Manipur, where at least 15 more people, including two children, were killed in fresh clashes.
The report criticised law enforcement responses, alleging that in many cases police either failed to properly register complaints or filed cases against victims instead of perpetrators.
It also referenced concerns raised in February by United Nations special rapporteurs on torture and extrajudicial killings, who warned of “systemic” policing failures in India and cited reports of excessive use of force disproportionately affecting Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis.