A continuing — and worsening — trend of violence and discrimination against Muslims in India has long been documented by human rights organizations and independent monitors, including in a report I co-authored four years ago with fellow human rights lawyers Marzuki Darusman and Sonja Biserko. We concluded then that there was credible evidence that international crimes and other serious human rights violations had been committed against Muslims in India, especially since 2019. We also cautioned that Muslims were at risk of becoming a persecuted minority within India, and urged preventive and corrective measures by the government of India and the international community.
With the violence and abuses unabated since then and a dearth of domestic and international action to stop them, my colleagues and I reconvened in 2024 to report on the current situation and to call for specific actions. This time we focused on the northern Indian states of Assam and Uttar Pradesh (UP), where the pattern of escalating and widespread violence against Muslims is particularly evident and acute. Both states are controlled by the ruling Hindu-majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in particular by chief ministers who are virulent in their anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies.
This pattern of human rights violations and abuses requires urgent action, most particularly through independent official investigations and ideally at the domestic level. Yet, across India and in these states especially, impunity has deepened, and domestic institutions have proven consistently unwilling or unable to provide redress. That means international bodies and foreign governments must redouble efforts to press Indian authorities for accountability and take action unilaterally to the extent the law allows. And there are a number of steps that can still be taken, before it is too late.
A Lack of Independent Investigations
My colleagues and I embarked on our original independent investigation after becoming deeply alarmed by reports of increasingly serious human rights violations against Muslim communities in India. We also realized that there were no independent investigations of the kind that we had undertaken many times domestically or internationally in similar situations, as India appeared to be protected by the governments of foreign states that seek trade, investment and strategic ties, as well as by its reputation as the world’s largest democracy with a broadly inclusive constitution.
We had each previously led efforts to investigate or prosecute serious human rights violations and international crimes in countries such as Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and North Korea, for United Nations Human Rights Council bodies and others. So we formed our three-person “Panel of Independent International Experts to Examine Information About Alleged Violations of International Law Committed Against Muslims in India (PIIE).”
We focused on Assam and Uttar Pradesh because they are central to the situation of Muslims in India. Uttar Pradesh is India’s largest province, with Muslims making up close to 20 percent of its population, with the greatest number in any Indian state. Muslims in Assam, at some 11 million in the 2011 census, constitute almost 35 percent of that state’s total population, and they form a majority in 11 of its total 27 districts.
Uttar Pradesh has been ruled by the BJP since 2017, led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu supremacist who has a long history of anti-Muslim baiting, including by inciting hate and violence, founding violent groups, and mobilizing Hindu extremists to target Muslims and other minorities. In Assam, it is again the chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma of the BJP, in power since 2021, who plays that role, having made anti-Muslim targeting the core of his polarizing politics.
These men have used their leadership of state governments to implement the BJP’s Hindu-first ideology, with a range of discriminatory laws, policies, and programs. This has effectively given license to public and private actors to commit widespread violations and abuses of the human rights of Muslims, including through physical violence.
In our independent panel’s latest report, issued on March 31, violations and abuses we tracked in Assam and Uttar Pradesh included extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment. Authorities also reportedly resorted frequently to collective punishment against groups of minorities and dissenters in reprisal for various perceived or alleged actions. Anti-minority incitement and violence are common, with Hindu militant groups aligned with the ruling party holding much sway and working in tandem with local authorities to target Muslims and other minorities. The Hindu groups include the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), recently recommended for sanctions by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and its affiliates, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Congress) and Bajrang Dal (the Army of Hanuman) and various “cow protection” gangs.
Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity
As in our 2022 report, we also found credible evidence of the commission of international crimes, specifically acts that constitute crimes against humanity. This time we drew particular attention to the systematic stripping of citizenship from Bengali-speaking Muslims, including the right to work and reside in Assam. This may amount to apartheid as a crime against humanity because it includes inhumane acts committed within an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination over a racialized group. The violence in Assam has included at least 17,000 forcible evictions from residences, and 2,450 “push-back” expulsions into Bangladesh, which can amount to deportation or forcible transfer as a crime against humanity.
Sarma, the Assam chief minister, has made multiple public statements portraying Bengali-speaking Muslims as infiltrators and as existential threats against the Hindu majority, effectively encouraging violent confrontations. While we do not yet find proof of intent to destroy the group physically, as opposed to evicting it violently from India, we do see his public statements as raising the risk of genocide. In light of India’s and the international community’s obligation to prevent genocide, we believe such rhetoric warrants urgent measures to hold the Sarma accountable and to stop such violence-inciting speech in the future. We note that such language can be found to constitute persecution as a crime against humanity, based on the precedent of the “Media Case’” that I prosecuted at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and that resulted in the conviction of two directors of RTLM Radio and the publisher of the Kangura newspaper.
In both Assam and Uttar Pradesh, there have been substantial numbers of “encounter killings” by police — the shooting of persons whom they confront during their operations, particularly those demonstrating against government policies, with Muslims figuring disproportionately among the victims. The officers’ claims of self-defense are always accepted with no investigation and no prospect of accountability. Instead, the killers are even lauded and promoted to senior positions in police hierarchy.
In Assam, 83 individuals were killed in such contexts during the first three years of Sarma’s government, and 266 were killed in Uttar Pradesh during the first seven years of Adityanath’s government. This lethal violence, committed as part of abusive and punitive policing disproportionately targeting Muslims, compounded by the absence of remedies, can constitutes persecution as crimes against humanity.
Police in Uttar Pradesh also appear to be adopting a new police practice as part of what has been called “Operation Langla” (“Operation Lame”), when authorities don’t kill but rather lame or maim a victim in the process of some kind of enforcement action, known colloquially as “half-encounter” incidents. We counted 56 recent victims, just in 2024 (Annex IV of our report). This can constitute torture as a crime against humanity, as it involves the intentional infliction of severe physical pain or suffering on victims who are under the control of state agents.
Another form of persecution as a crime against humanity in Uttar Pradesh is the pattern and practice of arresting Muslims who are protesting discrimination and subjecting them to long detention, and the discriminatory enforcement measures directed at Muslims engaged in cattle trade and meat-related business, in pursuance of government policy to protect cows, considered sacred by Hindus.
Urgent Action Needed
This pattern of human rights violations and abuses requires urgent action, especially independent official investigations, preferably at the domestic level. However, throughout our examination, we saw that key justice institutions, including the highest courts, have failed to protect the rights of the Muslim minority. A February 2025 report by the International Commission of Jurists raised alarm over the waning independence of India’s Supreme Court. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers raised similar concerns the same month about the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court.
Emblematic of the failures of domestic mechanisms to provide remedies is India’s National Human Rights Commission, which has been recommended for downgrade to ‘B’ status by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions. This is due to the lack of acknowledgement of the violations, and insufficient efforts to independently investigate and prosecute the perpetrators or to provide restitution to families, even to those most devastated by wrongful conduct.
For the Indian Government
Though we cannot be optimistic about the prospects for domestic action, we urge the Indian government to take the following steps:
- Conduct independent investigations and, where merited, prosecutions of identified perpetrators, and provide adequate reparation to victims, including interim measures.
- Fulfill the obligations of India under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Genocide Convention, and the U.N.’s “Responsibility to Protect” principles, and implement the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Resolution 58/29 and the Rabat Plan of Action against incitement to hatred.
For International Bodies
The U.N.’s treaty bodies and its mandated experts have repeatedly called for international attention to the human rights situation in India, most recently through the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) Early Warning and Urgent Action procedure. In fact, there have been 91 communications regarding human rights violations or abuses in India from U.N. mechanisms during 2020-2026. All of it has had little effect. This is due, we think, to India’s disregard for its treaty obligations, and the international community’s failure of its own obligation to demand more from member states, including of the Human Rights Council, of which India continues to be a member.
This is why we recommend the following urgent actions by international bodies and foreign governments:
- The U.N. Human Rights Council should mandate an independent fact-finding body to investigate violations against Muslims in India or call for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a comprehensive human rights assessment of India as a step to seeking the appointment of a Special Rapporteur with a territorial mandate of India.
- The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights should establish an evidentiary repository to receive and preserve information from civil society-led fact-finding and documentation processes, for future accountability proceedings.
- The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) should open a preliminary examination of the forcible deportation of Bengali-speaking Muslims from Assam into Bangladesh, an ICC member state. This is the same jurisdictional basis upon which the ICC in 2019 authorized an investigation of the forcible deportation of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar into Bangladesh, and in that case, the ICC Prosecutor in November 2024 sought an arrest warrant for the supreme leader of Myanmar, Min Aung Hlaing.
- Prosecution authorities in third states should exercise universal jurisdiction – that is, based on the duty of states to prosecute international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity, individual states may (and should) investigate and prosecute identified perpetrators as well as others who have aided and abetted the criminal actions, regardless of where the crimes were committed.
- Foreign governments with human rights sanctioning authorities, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union should apply targeted sanctions to restrict the travel and freeze the assets of identified perpetrators.
- Foreign governments should fulfill their international law obligations, including under the Genocide Convention, to address incitement and risks of mass atrocities and use diplomatic and economic leverage to encourage India to protect religious minorities.
Conclusion
History teaches that descent into mass violence does not begin with wars. It begins with narratives, and with the gradual normalization of the idea that coexistence is no longer viable. This is accompanied by legal and administrative practices that categorize populations, differentiate rights, and that characterize certain communities as demographic or security threats. Only later do these processes culminate in ethnic cleansing and ultimately genocide, as occurred in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and Myanmar, to take recent examples. There were many signals in all these cases, but unfortunately the international community reacted only after mass crimes had been committed.
The value of this comparison lies in identifying patterns in early warning signs that transcend specific contexts. The measures in Assam and Uttar Pradesh targeted at Muslims that we documented, are not isolated, rather they constitute the early stages of a process that, if left unchecked, could escalate into more systematic forms of violence.
Early warning signs matter precisely because they offer a window for prevention. The international community must act to prevent in India what can be avoided from becoming inevitable.
