An incident that is hard to believe has been reported to have taken place in a D-Mart store at Virar, a place near Mumbai, where a Muslim woman from Nalasopara West claims to have been harassed and threatened over her hijab during her shopping. The details in a viral video suggest that the confrontation between the woman and a group of shoppers developed when the latter passed derogatory comments about the woman’s religious clothing and even asked her to leave because she was a Muslim, which ultimately led to the threat of sexual violence.
‘You Are Muslims, Get Out, Will Rape You’
The woman eventually, in the video, disclosed that a man had said to her, ‘You are Muslims, get out; we will rape you’, and these words have been a cause of outrage on social media after the video was made public. This incident has raised the question of communal intolerance and religious identity based discrimination, which has thus become a serious concern. The woman’s case grew increasingly complicated when she, first of all, turned to the police but then told that no actions were taken by the authorities that night. She decided to stay at the police station until after midnight trying to get her rights but no First Information Report (FIR) was registered at that time. The case got a lot of momentum when the video got circulated on the internet, and social activist Ahmed Memon got involved and brought the woman back to the police station to make sure her issue got logged.
In Mumbai’s D-Mart, a Hindu man told a woman in a burqa: “I’ll call some men and get you r@ped.”
Religious Intolerance is growing everyday in India… pic.twitter.com/NyHNnOFKNl
— Dr Ranjan (@AAPforNewIndia) January 4, 2026
Police Investigations Going On
The management of the Virar D Mart store is said to have expressed their regret to the victim in the aftermath of the public uproar. At the same time, the activists have asked for religious tolerance, thorough investigation of the entire matter, and, thus, the involvement of the police and the community in a dialogue. The authorities have guaranteed a thorough investigation into both the alleged misconduct and the officer’s handling of the case during the first report. Such an event brings up the whole problem of religious discrimination and the security of minorities in public places, which has triggered online and local discussions on the subject of how these issues are handled by the government and the community.
