Sandhya Rani Dhar, mother of imprisoned Bangladeshi Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das, died on Thursday 10th September, without seeing her son one last time. As her health deteriorated over nearly two months of cancer treatment, her family’s repeated appeals for his temporary release were turned down. Authorities granted him five hours’ parole only after her death, to attend her cremation.
Chinmoy Krishna Das, spokesperson for the Bangladesh Sammilito Sanatani Jagaran Jote (Bangladesh’s United Sanatani Awakening Front), has been detained since November 2024 on sedition charges stemming from a rally held by the Hindu community in Chittagong calling for stronger protections for minorities. During the rally, a saffron religious flag was placed above Bangladesh’s national flag, an act the case against him calls “desecration.” Chinmoy Krishna Das told reporters at the time that he was roughly 2km away when it happened. The Dhaka Tribune reported that senior lawyer ZI Khan Panna publicly criticised the case as vague and lacking in necessary details. He now faces several further cases, including one connected to the killing of a lawyer during protests that followed his arrest. For British Hindus, many of whom have direct family ties to Bangladesh’s Sanatani community, his case has become a focal point for concerns about how that minority is treated and about the space it has to advocate for itself.
Footage from his mother’s cremation, showing Chinmoy Krishna Das in tears before a Radha-Krishna murti at Pundarik Dham, has circulated widely, putting a human face on a case that has come to symbolise those broader concerns.
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, the country’s largest minority rights body, recorded 257 incidents of communal violence in the first half of 2026 alone, resulting in 44 deaths, figures the Bangladeshi Government disputes, but which rights monitors say reflect a real and ongoing pattern.
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