Rahul PAWA | @imrahulpawa (X)
Global jihadists see an opening: a chance to reconnect their Pakistani networks with Bangladeshi extremists, reversing years of counterterrorism and counter-radicalisation gains.
On a mid-December night in Bangladesh, 25-year-old Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu garment factory worker was beaten by a frenzy of Islamists, hung from a tree, and set ablaze on a highway. His alleged “crime”? A rumor that he insulted Islam. Yet investigators have since confirmed there is zero evidence that Dipu ever blasphemed at all. Not one can point to a single derogatory remark he made; “no one saw or heard” anything offensive, a Rapid Action Battalion officer admitted. In other words, an innocent Hindu man was lynched and immolated over a lie.
One would expect such a medieval atrocity, captured on video and circulated worldwide, to provoke an outpouring of shock from international human rights watchdogs. Imagine if the roles were reversed: a Muslim man lynched and burned by a mob in a Hindu-majority country. The global indignation would be instantaneous and deafening. But in Dipu’s case, the outrage has been oddly muted. Major human rights organizations and Western governments that normally champion minority rights barely mustered a whisper of protest. The deafening silence of these supposed watchdogs is as harrowing as the crime itself, and it exposes a disturbing double standard.
Bangladesh’s own minority rights groups vehemently condemned the lynching, the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council decried the “so-called blasphemy” killing as an assault on communal harmony. But where were the urgent press releases from Geneva, the high-profile tweets from Human Rights Watch, the emergency sessions at the UN? Their voices have been either absent or astonishingly subdued. Such restraint stands in stark contrast to their usual activism when religious persecution occurs elsewhere. The message implicit in this silence is chilling: that the lynching of a poor Hindu man in Bangladesh is somehow a lesser transgression on the global human rights ledger.
The hypocrisy extends to Bangladesh’s interim rulers. The current government, led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, swept to power in August 2024 after a Islamist-led “Monsoon Revolution” toppled Sheikh Hasina’s democratically elected administration. Internationally, Yunus is venerated for championing human rights and equality. Domestically, his regime’s actions tell a darker story. Chief Adviser Yunus was quick to issue a condemnation of Dipu’s lynching, vowing the perpetrators “will not be spared”. However, such words ring hollow against the regime’s track record: while it denounces one mob killing, it has concurrently overseen the release or escape of hundreds of criminals and Islamist extremists since taking power. At Hadi’s funeral, Yunus himself delivered a eulogy that should have set off international alarm bells. In front of tens of thousands, Yunus heaped praise on Hadi’s “mantra” and vowed to fulfill Hadi’s vision “generation after generation”. Let’s be clear: Hadi was explicitly known for his anti-India and anti-Hindu rhetoric and polarising, Islamist-tinged politics. By publicly sanctifying Hadi’s ideals, Yunus sent a dangerous signal that anti-India and anti-Hindu dictate is now quasi-official ideology in Dhaka.
Unsurprisingly, the fallout was swift. Days after Hadi’s death, Bangladesh erupted in fury, not just against alleged conspirators in his killing, but against perceived Indian influence. Mobs attacked the Indian Assistant High Commission in Chittagong, and hundreds of protesters marched on the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, chanting anti-India slogans and even hurling stones at diplomatic compounds. Bangladesh’s police hinted (without evidence) that Hadi’s assassins might have fled to India – where ex-PM Hasina has taken refuge – a claim that only inflamed public paranoia. In the frenzy, fact and fiction mattered little: ‘anti-India and anti-Hindu agenda’ was the rallying cry. Caught in the crossfire were Bangladesh’s Hindu minorities, now doubly scapegoated as both “blasphemers” at home and perceived fifth-columnists for India. Attacks on Hindu homes, temples and community leaders have spiked over the past year and a half. Even before Dipu Das’s lynching, minority groups warned that the post-Hasina political climate had emboldened extremists to settle scores with Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. Tragically, those warnings proved prescient in Bhaluka, Mymensingh, when Dipu’s killers exploited a religious rumor to unleash lethal mob “justice.” Police and RAB have detained ten suspects, Mohammad Limon Sarkar, Mohammad Tarek Hossain, Mohammad Manik Mia, Ershad Ali, Nijum Uddin, Alomgir Hossain, Mohammad Miraj Hossain Akon, Mohammad Azmol Hasan Sagir, Mohammad Shahin Mia, and Mohammad Nazmul, aged 19 to 46. The interim regime’s, especially Mohammad Yunis’s own actions, from baiting an anti-Indian agitator to allowing Islamist hardliners back into public life, have fertilised the soil in which Islamist extremism and radicalisation grows.
Perhaps most cynical of all has been the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry’s complicity and the atrocious attempt to downplay these horrors. When India officially protested the mob killing of a Hindu Bangladeshi (and even a small peoples demonstration in New Delhi decrying it), Dhaka’s response was dismissive. Foreign Affairs Adviser Mohammad Touhid Hossain bristled at the notion that Dipu Das’s lynching had anything to do with minority targeting. He then lectured that “such incidents occur across the region” and every country has a responsibility to address themas if mob lynching and immolation of religious minorities is just business as usual in South Asia, nothing special. This whataboutist shrug is nothing short of an attempt to normalise hate crimes. By equating a communal lynching with generic law-and-order problems everywhere, Bangladesh’s officials signal that the brutal murder of a Hindu for an unproven slur is not a national emergency but a routine matter that merits no extra soul-searching.
This attitude is profoundly dangerous. Bangladesh was founded on principles of secularism and communal harmony in 1971, a legacy now under siege. To shrug off anti-Hindu violence as “common in the region” is to abandon the very idea of a pluralistic Bangladesh. It emboldens extremists and tells persecuted minorities that they are essentially on their own.
Indeed, Islamist radicals have heard the message loud and clear. With the new regime’s indulgence, dormant terrorist networks are roaring back to life. Key jihadist leaders have re-entered the fray, for example, the jailed chiefs of Ansar al-Islam (an Al-Qaeda aligned group) and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami were freed on bail amid the post-revolution chaos. Alarmingly, Al-Qaeda’s branch in the region openly celebrated the 2024 upheaval in Bangladesh as a win against “corruption and secularism,” urging an Islamic revival. Global jihadists see an opening: a chance to reconnect their Pakistani networks with Bangladeshi extremists, reversing years of counterterrorism and counter-radicalisation gains.
If Bangladesh’s leaders continue to trivialise Hindu lynchings and Islamist violence, they risk steering the country toward the sectarian abyss that neighbouring Pakistan has long struggled to escape. The upshot is strategic instability for all of South Asia, rising cross-border tensions with India, weakened cooperation against terrorism, and a potential refugee exodus if violence spirals further. The stakes could not be higher, nor the warning signs more glaring.
(Rahul Pawa is an international criminal lawyer and director of research at New Delhi based think tank Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies.)
CIHS - Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies 