Muslim student in India 'beaten for talking to Hindu girl’

A young Muslim man in India was reportedly beaten by a mob of Hindu vigilantes after they accused him of talking to a Hindu woman.

Footage of the incident shows the man - identified as a computer science student at a university in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh - attempting to negotiate with several men surrounding him, who proceed to punch and beat him.

Later in the video, some of the men use batons on him as he screams in pain.

The assailants allegedly belonged to the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM), a hardline Hindu nationalist group that is accused of targeting members of India's religious minorities. They are believed to have filmed the incident.

The footage was shared by Hindutva Watch, a research group that monitors reports of attacks on religious minorities in India, as well as Ashok Swain, professor of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden.

A Muslim student, doing Masters in Computer Science is being brutally beaten up by a Hindu Supremacist vigilante group for talking to a Hindu girl in MP, India. pic.twitter.com/Ecl6NFjC1Y

— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) January 18, 2023

Despite threats from the assailants, the man in the video reportedly lodged a complaint with local police.

Members of the HJM have assaulted other students before, according to the Hindutva Watch monitoring group.

India has seen a rise in attacks on Muslims since 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), came to power.

Members of the BJP have continued to incite bigotry and violence against Muslims, who make up around 15 percent of India’s population.

At a rally last October, MPs from the ruling party called for a boycott of Muslim-owned shops and compared Muslims to "pigs".

Hindu nationalists have also spread the "love jihad" conspiracy theory, which claims that Muslim men are attempting to lure Hindu women away from their families by marrying them.