Of 50 extrajudicial killings of Muslims in 2025, 27 were by Hindutva men and 23 by officials: report
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A report claimed that Hindu extremist attacks and harassment, along with widespread police excesses, had led to the deaths of Muslims across the country in 2025, as it showed 50 extrajudicial killings of Muslims in India during the year, of which 27 were carried out by Hindu extremists on the basis of religious identity and 23 Muslims, including two children, were killed through the involvement of officials in uniform.
According to the SAJC’s India Persecution Tracker, the killings by state actors were spread across multiple regions, although Jammu and Kashmir emerged as the deadliest theatre, where at least eight Kashmiri Muslim civilians had died during security operations that were repeatedly marked by allegations of custodial torture, enforced disappearance, staged encounters and systematic cover-ups, even as official accounts continued to portray these deaths as legitimate counter-terror actions, Maktoob Media reported.
In Uttar Pradesh, where police “encounters” have become an entrenched policing tool, at least six Muslims were killed in confirmed shootings in 2025, while dozens of others were left maimed in what the Tracker described as continuing “half-encounter” operations that disabled victims without killing them.
Beyond these two states, at least five other Muslims were reported to have died in police custody or shortly after detention across four states, as families alleged torture and the deliberate denial of medical care, while additional deaths occurred during eviction drives and other uses of lethal force by state agencies, a pattern that also included the killing of two Muslim children.
Among the most disturbing cases, the Tracker recorded the death of a one-and-a-half-month-old infant who was crushed during a police raid on her family home in Rajasthan in March, and the killing of 14-year-old Sahil Ansari, who was shot by an off-duty CISF constable during a wedding procession in Delhi in November.
The 27 killings attributed to Hindu extremists were dominated by mob violence, as nine victims were murdered by organised cow vigilante groups or following accusations of cattle theft, while at least five people, including four Muslims and a Dalit, were killed after being branded “Bangladeshis” or “illegal immigrants” amid the government’s campaign against Bengali-speaking Muslims. The Tracker also documented two cases of Muslims taking their own lives after sustained extremist violence or harassment, which it said reflected the wider climate of fear.
Alongside these killings, at least 26 episodes of targeted mass violence against Muslims were reported across 13 states, as well as hundreds of individual assaults and other non-fatal hate crimes, even while Adivasi communities, particularly in Chhattisgarh, faced a parallel toll from counterinsurgency operations that security forces claimed had killed more than 275 Maoists, many of whom were alleged to be civilians.
Comparing the trend, the report noted that 21 extrajudicial killings of Muslims by state actors had been documented in 2024 and 20 in 2023, and it warned that, as India entered 2026 with major elections approaching, the routinisation of persecution, combined with economic distress and declining international standing, was creating powerful incentives for further polarisation and escalating risks for minorities.
