The expanding reach of informal policing: A national overview of targeted acts against Muslims and Christians From assaults and forced ID checks to prayer raids and demolitions, incidents across states reveal a growing pattern of civilian policing enabled by institutional silence
18, Dec 2025 | CJP Team
Across several states in recent months, ordinary citizens have begun acting as self-appointed enforcers of identity and morality, stopping people to demand documents, forcing religious slogans, shutting down shops, raiding prayer meetings and assaulting those accused of violating communal norms. Muslims and Christians have borne the brunt of these actions, which are increasingly filmed and circulated online as acts of public intimidation rather than hidden vigilantism. The incidents documented here, spread across diverse regions, show a pattern in which private actors assert control over public and private spaces while law-enforcement authorities either stand by or intervene selectively. The result is a climate where the policing of faith, livelihood and everyday movement becomes normalised, and where minority communities must navigate routine interactions under the threat of surveillance, humiliation or violence. This report covers incidents recorded between September and November 2025.
According to the latest available data, in 2024 alone, a comprehensive survey by India Hate Lab (IHL) documented 1,165 in-person hate-speech events targeting religious minorities across India, marking a 74.4 percent rise from the 668 incidents recorded in 2023. A significant number of these incidents occurred in states governed by the ruling coalition, underlining the geographic and political concentration of communal hate mobilisation. Many of these hate-speech events including rallies, processions, public speeches, and nationalist gatherings were accompanied by social-media amplification, transforming offline aggression into widely visible and shared public spectacle. At the same time, India is entering a high-stakes electoral cycle in 2025–2026, with state assembly elections scheduled in key states such as Delhi, Bihar, Assam, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry. This convergence of rising hate speech, online amplification and election-era mobilisation has created a volatile environment in which ordinary citizens increasingly act as self-appointed enforcers of identity and morality, often targeting religious minorities under the guise of vigilante zeal. Reported NDTV.
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These dynamics now play out not only through speeches or online rhetoric, but through direct interference in everyday life. Across markets, highways, neighbourhoods, schools and private homes, civilians have increasingly taken on roles that mimic policing functions. They stop individuals from demanding proof of citizenship or religious identity, supervise what businesses may sell or display, disrupt prayer gatherings inside homes or churches, compel public chanting of religious slogans, and enforce boycotts against minority traders. In several cases, these acts escalate into physical violence, public humiliation, or forced displacement. The presence of cameras and mobile phones has added another layer to the intimidation; confrontations are recorded and circulated as proof of ideological performance, converting harassment into spectacle. Police responses frequently blur the line between enforcement and endorsement, with officers either standing by during mob action, detaining victims after vigilante complaints, or acting only once public pressure mounts. Within this landscape, the distinction between civilian vigilantism and state authority weakens, leaving targets without clear avenues of protection while aggressors operate with growing confidence that their actions fall within tolerated political behaviour.
The incidents documented across states fall broadly into six categories: vigilante violence; economic harassment and boycott; raids on prayer meetings; identity policing and forced slogans; evictions and demolitions; and patterns of state response and police complicity.
Vigilante violence
Across states, groups identifying themselves as cow-protection or majoritarian outfits have moved from episodic intimidation to repeated physical enforcement on public roads, markets and transit routes. These actions take several common forms. Perpetrators intercept transporters and vendors, they detain and humiliate people on the spot, they physically assault those who resist, and they record and circulate the confrontation to amplify the act. The incidents collected here show that such attacks are not isolated. They recur in different states, follow similar scripts, and often end with victims being punished while perpetrators face little immediate consequence.
In Maharashtra on September 24, 2025, two cattle transporters – one Hindu and one Muslim – were intercepted and assaulted; a later video shows the victims forced to apologise as their cattle were taken away. In Sambhajinagar on November 10, 2025, a vigilante named Shobhraj Patil is recorded slapping and kicking a Muslim cattle transporter and verbally abusing others who were made to sit on the ground; other Bajrang Dal members restrained Patil only after the violence escalated. On November 12, 2025, In Balikuda, Jagatsinghpur, members of the Bajrang Dal and Hindu Sena entered a Muslim neighbourhood armed with sticks and, following their complaint, police confiscated meat for “investigation”; there is no contemporaneous record of action against the groups that forced entry.
Vigilante attacks also target traders. On November 2, 2025 in Ludhiana, Gau Raksha Dal members raided a biryani shop on beef allegations, detained the owner and handed him to police. In Hisar on November 4, 2025, a Bajrang Dal activist identified by local reporting assaulted a meat vendor for opening on a Tuesday and forced the vendor to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” an episode that was filmed and circulated – The Tribune reported. In Indore on November 10, 2025, Members of the Bajrang Dal assaulted a Muslim gym trainer after seeing him driving with a Hindu woman, accusing him of “luring” Hindu women. Despite the woman defending him and no formal complaint being lodged by her, the police allegedly transferred the case between police stations citing jurisdiction issues and ultimately sent the gym trainer to jail under restrictive legal sections. No reported police action against the vigilante attackers was available at the time of documentation.
The interplay between vigilante coercion and state action is evident in Damoh, Madhya Pradesh. On November 2, 2025, following pressure from far-right groups and cow vigilantes, police publicly paraded nine Muslim men accused of cow slaughter, despite statements from local butchers that the animal involved was a buffalo. In the local butcher market, vigilantes allegedly attacked with sticks while accusing traders of cow slaughter, leading to clashes. Police action was taken only against the Muslim men, who were jailed under provisions of the Animal Cruelty Act, even as officials later described the slaughtered animal as a buffalo calf. No action against the vigilante attackers was reported at the time of documentation. That sequence shows how vigilante pressure can shape law enforcement responses and how public parading becomes a tool of humiliation rather than a neutral investigatory procedure.
Legally these incidents implicate offences such as assault, criminal intimidation, trespass and unlawful assembly. These attacks also raise serious constitutional concerns about arbitrary deprivation of liberty when arrests follow vigilante complaints rather than independent police inquiry. The recorded habit of filming and broadcasting confrontations converts private violence into public spectacle, and that publicity frequently insulates perpetrators by forcing rapid public narratives that favour the aggressors. Across the documented cases, police responses range from delayed intervention to actions that appear to prioritise complaints lodged by vigilante groups rather than protecting those they have attacked. That pattern underlines why vigilante violence in the present period cannot be treated as random crime. It must be understood as a coordinated set of practices that enforce ideological norms through force, humiliation and selective use of formal law enforcement.
Harassment, Economic Intimidation and Boycott
Across multiple states, economic life has become a stage for enforcing majoritarian identity rules. Markets, roadside stalls and ordinary workplaces have turned into sites where Hindutva groups and sympathisers dictate who may trade, which foods may be sold, what symbols may be displayed and how Muslim vendors must present themselves in order to remain in business. These interventions do not involve claims of law and order. They operate through intimidation, accusations of deception and appeals to communal purity, all of which seek to restrict the economic presence of Muslims in public spaces. The incidents recorded here show that harassment often comes first, followed by pressure on police or local authorities to legitimise the exclusion.
In Ludhiana on November 2 2025, members of the Gau Raksha Dal stormed a biryani shop, accused the shopkeeper of selling beef and detained him before handing him to police. The manner of the raid reflects a broader trend in which Hindutva groups conduct their own inspections and arrests, treating Muslim-run establishments as inherently suspect while assuming the authority to punish on the spot. Police treatment of the incident focused on the allegation of beef sale rather than the unlawful detention and intimidation carried out by the vigilantes.
Economic policing is even more overt in Dehradun, where on November 14 2025, Kali Sena leaders publicly confronted a Muslim contractor who managed a dry-fruit stall. The men accused him of engaging in what they termed “mungfali jihad,” claiming that Hindu vendors and a calendar displaying a Hindu deity were being used to deceive customers. The language deployed in the confrontation draws directly from Hindutva propaganda that imagines Muslim economic activity as a covert threat. No action was taken on the leaders who staged the intimidation, although the harassment was filmed and circulated.
In Mapusa, Goa, on October 3, 2025 far-right men harassed a Muslim shopkeeper and his staff, insisting that they present themselves as visibly Muslim by adopting green colour, changing their names and refraining from touching the picture of a Hindu deity displayed in the shop. That episode shows how Hindutva surveillance extends into everyday bodily behaviour and demands that Muslims perform identity as perceived by majoritarian norms. The threats were issued in the presence of staff and customers, yet there is no record of police intervention.
In Delhi’s Gokulpuri area on November 27, 2025, Hindu nationalist supporters forcibly shut down meat shops on the grounds that a temple was nearby. The idea that Muslim vendors should not operate in proximity to Hindu religious sites has become a recurring argument in Hindutva campaigns that seek to push Muslims out of mixed localities. The forced closures left vendors without income for the day and reinforced the message that their right to livelihood is conditional on the whims of majoritarian groups rather than equal protection under law.
These incidents illustrate a pattern in which economic activity becomes an arena for enforcing communal boundaries. They reflect a deliberate strategy within Hindutva politics to curtail Muslim economic visibility and participation. The absence of police action against harassers and the willingness of authorities to act on vigilante complaints further institutionalise these informal boycotts. Through repeated intimidation and public humiliation, these groups attempt to reshape markets into spaces that mirror and reinforce majoritarian social control.
Raids on Prayer Meetings and the Criminalisation of Christian Worship
Across several states, Christian prayer gatherings have become one of the most visible targets of Hindutva surveillance, reflecting a climate in which routine worship is increasingly cast as suspicious activity. Civil society reports show that the portrayal of Christians as agents of coercive conversion has become a central plank of Hindutva mobilisation, creating an atmosphere where even small home-based gatherings are vulnerable to intrusion and violence. This narrative has normalised vigilante entry into private spaces and produced situations where state institutions appear more responsive to the allegations of disruptors than to the rights of Christians who are attacked.
The incidents documented here show three recurring elements. Hindutva groups repeatedly enter private houses to disrupt worship, often accompanied by assault or the burning of religious books, as seen in Rohtak where, November 9, 2025 Christian participants were beaten and their Bibles burnt. These forced entries are justified through claims of “illegal conversion,” a narrative that has gained wide circulation in political speeches and local mobilisation campaigns, reinforcing the idea that Christian worship should be monitored rather than protected. The allegations themselves become tools that shift suspicion onto victims, making the act of prayer appear as evidence of wrongdoing.
A second pattern emerges through state response. In Rohtak, police allegedly questioned the victims rather than the perpetrators and later monitored their calls, reflecting a deeper institutional assumption that those who pray are the ones who require investigation rather than protection. This inversion of victim and accused also appears in Uttar Pradesh, where on November 16, 2025 members of the Bajrang Dal raided a Christian prayer meeting, alleging that illegal religious conversions were taking place. They claimed that poor Hindu women were being offered money to convert to Christianity. Following their complaint, police reached the location and arrested three individuals on charges related to unlawful religious conversion. No action against the vigilante group was reported. Similar patterns have been documented nationally wherever anti-conversion rhetoric is deployed to justify interference in Christian worship.
A third pattern concerns how the state frames these incidents. When on November 8, 2025 Hindu nationalist groups confronted a Christian gathering in Korba, Chhattisgarh, the disruption escalated into clashes after outsiders entered the residence and accused attendees of conversion. Official accounts framed the situation as a two-sided confrontation, obscuring the fact that the meeting was peaceful until disrupted. This framing aligns with rhetorical strategies that recast minority communities as sources of instability, even when they are the ones targeted.
In Agra, on November 23, 2025 members of the VHP–Bajrang Dal raided a private Christian prayer meeting and filed complaints alleging inducement to convert. Police detained a man and several women for questioning but did not act against the raiding group, entrenching the perception that majoritarian actors can intrude upon religious spaces with impunity. This is consistent with research showing that police often absorb the assumptions of vigilantes, reinforcing structural bias in how minority religious practice is policed.
Taken together, these episodes reveal a pattern in which prayer is treated as potential evidence, faith is framed as a threat and Christian worship becomes subject to the approval of hostile majoritarian actors. Hindutva groups position themselves as regulators of religious life, while police responses often validate their claims through investigation of the victims and neglect of the perpetrators. The result is a message that Christian communities can neither rely on privacy in their own homes nor on equal protection from the state.
Forced Slogans and Identity Policing
A striking feature of the current wave of communal hostility is the policing of Muslim identity in everyday spaces. These incidents do not involve allegations of crime or conversion. They revolve around humiliation, coercion and the demand that Muslims publicly affirm majoritarian slogans as proof of loyalty. National reports show that such practices have increased alongside online hate campaigns that dehumanise Muslims and frame them as permanent outsiders requiring discipline. The pattern is not incidental. It reflects a deliberate cultural project in which asserting Hindu nationalist symbols becomes a test of citizenship.
The confrontation of a Muslim fruit vendor on October 25, 2025 in Doimukh, Arunachal Pradesh, where locals accused him of being Bangladeshi and demanded NRC documentation, illustrates how identity policing collapses into racial profiling and suspicion of illegality. Research shows that “Bangladeshi” rhetoric has frequently been used to target Bengali-speaking Muslims, turning documentation status into a tool of exclusion . The vendor was forced to close his stall despite no official verification, demonstrating how communal assumptions override legal process.
Forced sloganeering further reveals the psychological dimension of this violence. In Uttarakhand, a Muslim cleric was stopped on the road and threatened when he refused to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” a moment intended to remind him of his vulnerability in public space. India Today reported that in UP, on November 25, 2025 an elderly Muslim cab driver, Mohammad Rais, was harassed near the Taj Mahal parking area by a group of young men who demanded that he chant “Jai Shri Ram.” When he initially refused, the men threatened him. The incident was filmed and later circulated on social media. Local police at Tajganj Police Station registered an FIR and said they are investigating the video evidence, though no arrests had been made at the time of the report.
Identity policing functions as a low-threshold form of violence. It does not require large groups or organised campaigns. It relies on the everyday assertion of dominance, the demand for symbolic compliance and the threat of punishment for refusal. These incidents demonstrate how Hindu nationalist mobilisation penetrates ordinary life. The pressure to chant slogans, produce documents or justify one’s presence signals a shift in which Muslim identity is treated as suspicious unless actively performed in ways that satisfy majoritarian expectations.
Evictions and Demolitions as Instruments of Displacement.
The most far-reaching form of exclusion documented in this period appears in state-led eviction and demolition drives. These actions are carried out through legal and administrative mechanisms, yet their impact falls overwhelmingly on Muslim communities, raising questions about selective enforcement and the absence of safeguards. Research on eviction patterns in Assam and Gujarat has shown that state narratives of encroachment often overlap with political rhetoric that casts certain communities as illegitimate occupants.
In Goalpara, Assam, more than 580 Bengali-origin Muslim families were displaced during a large-scale eviction operation in the Dahikata Reserve Forest on 9 November (Incident 17). Officials stated that the drive was aimed at addressing human-elephant conflict and was conducted pursuant to Gauhati High Court directions, and notices were reportedly issued fifteen days earlier. Heavy machinery entered the area under substantial police presence and demolished remaining structures. No immediate rehabilitation or resettlement measures were announced, leaving hundreds without shelter. Protests were minimal and swiftly contained, with some residents detained. Reporting from the region CNN has noted that eviction drives disproportionately affect Bengali-origin Muslim settlements and often lack clear post-eviction planning.
The Wire reported that in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath district, demolitions on 10 November focused on Muslim-owned homes, shops and a dargah (Incident 18). While several structures were removed without resistance, the attempt to demolish the dargah triggered confrontation. Residents opposed the demolition, leading to clashes with police who used crowd-control measures to disperse them. No rehabilitation measures were reported for those who lost homes or commercial property. Coverage from previous years shows a sustained pattern of demolitions in the region that disproportionately target Muslim religious structures.
A second demolition sequence that same day saw tensions escalate further when locals attempted to prevent the removal of another dargah near the Somnath Temple area. Police responded with lathi charges and tear gas and arrested thirteen people who were later paraded publicly (Incident 19). Authorities described all demolished structures as illegal constructions on government land. Details of any resettlement process were absent.
These cases demonstrate how eviction functions not only as an administrative measure but also as a tool of dispossession when applied without safeguards or rehabilitation. The selective concentration of demolition activity in Muslim neighbourhoods reinforces perceptions that state power is being deployed unevenly.
State Complicity and Biased Policing
CNN reported that across multiple states, the line between vigilante activity and state response becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish. The incidents documented here show repeated patterns in which police act on the allegations of vigilante groups while neglecting the rights of the victims. Human rights analyses have noted that policing in communal situations often reflects underlying majoritarian assumptions, leading to disproportionate scrutiny of minorities and minimal accountability for aggressors. This dynamic is visible in cases involving Christians, Muslims and those accused of violating religious norms.
In Rohtak, Haryana, on November 9, 2025 police reportedly interrogated Christian victims after an Arya Samaj group assaulted them, burnt their Bibles and injured a pastor during a prayer meeting. Rather than treating the attack as a criminal intrusion into a private residence, officers shifted attention onto the victims and monitored their phones. This reflects a broader pattern identified by rights organisations, where anti-conversion rhetoric shapes police behaviour and legitimises scrutiny of Christian gatherings.
In Uttar Pradesh, on November 23, 2025 police acted on the complaint of Bajrang Dal members who raided a Christian prayer meeting and alleged inducement to convert, arresting three attendees while declining to take action against the vigilantes. The same reversal appears in Agra, on November 20, 2025 where VHP and Bajrang Dal members entered a private home to disrupt another Christian meeting. Police detained a man and several women for questioning, again treating the accused vigilantes as complainants rather than aggressors.
In Madhya Pradesh, state complicity took a more punitive form. In Damoh, on November 2, 2025 police publicly paraded nine Muslim men after allegations of cow slaughter, even though local butchers stated that the animal was a buffalo and not a cow. No action was taken against the vigilantes who attacked the butcher market. In Indore, on November 10, 2025 a Muslim gym trainer assaulted by Bajrang Dal members was jailed despite the Hindu woman involved not filing any complaint, while no action was initiated against the attackers.
These incidents show how policing becomes aligned with vigilante narratives. When state institutions absorb the assumptions of majoritarian groups, minority communities lose access to impartial protection. The result is not simply inadequate investigation but a structural failure in which victims are recast as suspects and unlawful violence becomes socially sanctioned through official inaction.
Legal Framework: Constitutional Protections, Criminal Law and Supreme Court Guidelines
The incidents documented in this report engage multiple areas of Indian law, including constitutional guarantees, criminal prohibitions under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), procedural obligations under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and binding Supreme Court directives on mob vigilantism. At their core, these cases reflect violations of the rights to equality, non-discrimination, personal liberty and religious freedom under Articles 14, 15, 19, 21 and 25 of the Constitution. Article 25 protects the right to freely profess and practice one’s faith, which extends to prayer meetings held in private homes or neighbourhood spaces. Evictions and demolitions without rehabilitation trigger concerns under Article 21 and the prohibition against arbitrary state action.
As per a report in the LiveLaw Under the new BNS, many of the acts witnessed here constitute clear criminal offences. Assault and causing hurt are covered under Sections 124 and 125, which penalise physical injury regardless of motive. Criminal intimidation is defined under Section 351, which applies to threats used to instil fear or force compliance. Forced entry into homes, including raids on Christian prayer meetings, falls within the definition of criminal trespass under Sections 329 and 330. The public parading of detainees undermines the constitutional guarantee of dignity and violates custodial safeguards linked to Article 21, which has been repeatedly upheld in Supreme Court jurisprudence.
Communal incitement and hate speech are addressed under Section 194 of the BNS, which criminalises acts that promote enmity between groups or deliberately provoke violence on grounds such as religion or race. This provision is directly relevant to forced slogans, threats and the circulation of humiliating videos, which mirror the trends identified in recent national analyses of hate speech escalation.
Procedurally, the BNSS continues to require prompt registration of FIRs, impartial investigation and accountability for dereliction of duty by law enforcement. These duties operate alongside the Supreme Court’s directives in Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India (2018), which remain binding. The Court mandated state responsibility to prevent mob violence, protect targeted communities, arrest perpetrators and discipline officers who fail to act. The recurring inaction or reversal of attention onto victims in the incidents documented here reflects clear non-compliance with these obligations.
Targeted demolitions and evictions further implicate constitutional protections. The Supreme Court in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation held that the right to life includes the right to shelter and that demolitions carried out without due process violate Article 21. The lack of rehabilitation reported in Assam and Gujarat contradicts these principles. Rights groups have noted that demolition and eviction in these regions disproportionately affect Muslim communities and often mirror political narratives of encroachment or demographic threat.
Taken together, the constitutional framework, the BNS and BNSS, and Supreme Court jurisprudence make clear that the acts described here violate established protections and statutory duties. The failure to act against vigilantes, the criminalisation of victims and the use of demolition powers without due process point not to isolated lapses but to structural disregard for the rule of law.
Conclusion
Taken together, the incidents documented across these states reveal a common pattern in which ordinary citizens, vigilante networks and state institutions participate in the policing of minority identity and belonging. What appears on the surface as scattered episodes of harassment, forced slogans, raids on prayer meetings or localised demolition drives becomes, in aggregate, a system of pressure that constrains the everyday freedoms of Muslims and Christians. National analyses of hate speech and communal mobilisation show that this pattern is not accidental but reflects a wider political environment in which minorities are cast as security risks, demographic threats or ideological adversaries. This environment encourages vigilantism by signalling that such conduct aligns with majoritarian expectations.
The unevenness of state response reinforces these pressures. Police often act on the allegations of vigilante groups while questioning, detaining or monitoring the victims. Eviction drives in Assam and demolition actions in Gujarat further illustrate how administrative power, when exercised without safeguards, produces large-scale dispossession that disproportionately affects Muslim communities. These practices undermine constitutional principles of equal protection and due process and violate the standards set by the Supreme Court in Tehseen Poonawalla, which requires proactive prevention of mob violence and accountability for official inaction.
As per a report in CNBC TV 18 a potential institutional response has emerged through Karnataka’s Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (Prevention) Bill, 2025, which for the first time proposes a clear statutory framework for defining hate speech and penalising organised intimidation. The Bill prescribes penalties of one to seven years for initial convictions, up to ten years for aggravated offences and empowers authorities to direct digital platforms to remove hate content. While some view this as a needed attempt to address escalating violence, its effectiveness will depend on impartial enforcement. Without structural reforms that ensure equal protection for minority victims, even progressive legal tools risk becoming instruments of selective repression.
The incidents in this report therefore point not only to unlawful actions by private actors but to a weakening of constitutional guarantees in everyday life. Restoring trust in the rule of law requires consistent action against vigilantism, accountability for discriminatory policing and a commitment to protecting the right of every community to live, worship and work without fear.
(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Risha Fathima)
Related:
Faith Under Fire: Coordinated Harassment of Christians After the Rajasthan Bill
Targeted as ‘Bangladeshis’: The Hate Speech Fuelling Deportations
Sanatan Ekta Padyatra: Unmasking the March of Majoritarianism
