Incidents of violence and threats against Muslims have been reported from at least four states following the terrorist attack in the Baisaran area of Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district on April 22, in which 26 people were killed and 17 others sustained injuries, and authorities have confirmed that the terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to identify their religion.
According to police, all but three of the victims in the attack were Hindu, and in the aftermath, several cases of intimidation and violence against Muslims have emerged from Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
In Uttarakhand’s Mussoorie, local police reported that 16 Kashmiri shawl vendors left the hill station after two of them were allegedly assaulted by locals on April 23, prompting the registration of a case and the arrest of three suspects who were identified as members of the Bajrang Dal, and who were later released after being booked under a provision related to disorderly conduct.
Shabir Ahmed Dar, one of the assaulted vendors from Kupwara, told The Indian Express that he had been visiting Mussoorie for 18 years to sell shawls, and said that the attackers were locals whom he had seen before, while the police allegedly told him and other vendors that it would be safer for them to leave as there were threats issued against Kashmiris following the Pahalgam attack.
Meanwhile, in Karnataka’s Mangaluru district, a man believed to be Muslim was lynched on April 28 after allegedly raising pro-Pakistan slogans during a cricket match, and although his identity remains unconfirmed, the police said that he was likely a migrant labourer aged between 35 and 40, and may have hailed from either West Bengal or Bihar, though some bystanders claimed he spoke Malayalam.
The police added that the man got into an argument with a person named Sachin at around 3.30 pm at the cricket match venue, after which Sachin and his associates assaulted him, and the man died of internal bleeding from blunt force trauma, with the body later found near a temple on the outskirts of the city.
In another disturbing incident, a 15-year-old Muslim schoolboy in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, was allegedly forced by a group to urinate on a Pakistan flag after he picked it up from the road during a protest against the Pahalgam attack, and although the flag had “Pakistan murdabad” written underneath, the protestors allegedly accused the boy of sympathising with Pakistan.
The student, who was returning home from school at the time, was surrounded by men and asked to shout slogans, and when he complied with their demand to pick up the flag, he was reportedly instructed to urinate on it to prove his solidarity with their protest, with videos of the incident being widely circulated on social media platforms.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal, Congress MLA Arif Masood received death threats from a man named Sachin Raghuvanshi, who posted a threatening message on Facebook saying he would kill Masood for allegedly supporting the Pahalgam terror attack, and after Masood filed a complaint, a first information report was registered at the Shahjanabad police station.
These incidents, occurring in quick succession across various states, have triggered concern among rights groups and political observers, as they reflect a pattern of communal backlash following terror attacks and underscore the vulnerability of Muslims to targeted hate and violence during periods of heightened tension.