At least 50 extrajudicial killings of Muslims in India in 2025, of which 27 were by Hindu extremists due to their religious identity, according to the data compiled by the South Asia Justice Campaign.
Two children were among 23 Muslims killed during last year in incidents involving police, armed forces, or other state security personnel, SAJC’s India Persecution Tracker reveals. The Tracker also documented two cases of Muslims taking their lives following violence and/or harassment by Hindu extremists.
The data also looks into arbitrary arrest, large-scale expulsion and refoulement of Bengali-speaking Muslims and other forms of atrocities faced by Muslims in India.
In 2025, the majority of the killings were recorded in Jammu & Kashmir, where at least eight Kashmiri Muslim civilians died during security operations marked by allegations of custodial torture, enforced disappearance, staged ‘encounters’, and systematic cover-ups.
In Uttar Pradesh, at least six Muslims were killed in confirmed cases of police ‘encounters’ in 2025. SAJC also stated that dozens of Muslims were maimed in continuing ‘half-encounter’ shootings in UP.
At least five other Muslims died in police custody or shortly after detention across four other states, with families alleging torture and denial of medical care. Additional killings occurred during eviction operations and in contexts involving the use of lethal force by state actors, including the deaths of two Muslim children.
In March, a one-and-a-half-month-old Muslim infant was crushed to death during a police raid at her family’s home in Rajasthan. In November, Sahil Ansari, a 14-year-old Muslim boy, was shot dead by an off-duty Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) constable during a wedding procession in Delhi.
Of the 27 killed by Hindu extremists, nine of these killings involved violence by members of organised cow vigilante groups and/or following mob accusations related to cattle theft, while at least 5 of the victims (4 Muslims and a Dalit) were murdered shortly after being accused by their assailants of being ‘Bangladeshis’ and ‘illegal immigrants’, against the backdrop of the Indian government’s ongoing xenophobic campaign against Bengali-speaking Muslims.
The documents also reveal that India’s Adivasis, particularly in Chhattisgarh, bore the brunt of the deadliest year of counterinsurgency operations in recent memory, with security forces claiming to have killed over 275 Maoists—many of whom are alleged to be Adivasi civilians—through the year.
At least 26 episodes of targeted mass violence against Muslims were reported, across 13 states, along with hundreds of individual assaults and non-fatal religiously-motivated hate crimes.
In 2024, there were 21 documented extrajudicial killings of Muslims by state actors. 20 such killings were documented in 2023.
“As India enters 2026, its persecution of religious minorities shocks as much by its routinisation as by its scale and cruelty, having become, as observers have been warning, a dangerous new normal. With elections looming in multiple crucial states, amid deepening economic distress and waning international credibility, the incentives for further polarisation—and the risks for minorities—appear to be escalating,” the report said.
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