Washington, Aug 19 (IANS) US law enforcement agencies recorded as many as 189 anti-Sikh and 32 anti-Hindu hate crime offences in 2025, according to newly released FBI data that provide no separate count for crimes targeting Indian Americans.
The figures were calculated from the FBI’s Reported Crimes in the Nation statistics. The annual report breaks down hate crimes motivated by religious, racial, ethnic and other forms of bias.
Law enforcement agencies reported 2,703 single-bias religious hate crime offences during the year. Anti-Sikh bias accounted for 7 per cent of those offences, equivalent to approximately 189 cases.
Anti-Hindu bias accounted for 1.2 per cent, or about 32 offences.
Anti-Jewish bias represented 62.3 per cent of religious hate crime offences, the largest share. Anti-Islamic or anti-Muslim bias accounted for 9.6 per cent, followed by anti-Sikh bias at 7 per cent.
The FBI also provided a separate count of victims. Of 2,798 victims of anti-religious hate crimes, 6.9 per cent — approximately 193 — were victims of anti-Sikh bias.
Anti-Hindu bias accounted for 1.2 per cent, representing 34 victims.
The number of victims can differ from the number of offences because one incident may include multiple offences or affect more than one person.
The report does not classify Indian Americans as a separate racial or ethnic group. Indian-origin victims could have been counted under anti-Asian, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh or other bias categories, depending on the circumstances and how local authorities classified the offence.
It is therefore not possible to determine from the national summary how many Indian Americans were victims of hate crimes in 2025.
The FBI said 7,200 single-bias hate crime offences were motivated by race, ethnicity or ancestry. Anti-Asian bias accounted for 5.8 per cent of those cases, equivalent to approximately 418 offences.
Among 7,427 victims of race, ethnicity or ancestry-based hate crimes, 5.9 per cent were targeted because of anti-Asian bias. That represents approximately 438 victims. The report does not divide that category according to national origin.
Overall, agencies reported 10,881 hate crime incidents involving 13,026 offences in 2025. The cases involved 13,438 victims and 9,509 known offenders.
The number of reported incidents fell from 11,679 in 2024 to 10,881 in 2025, a decline of about 6.8 per cent. Offences dropped from 13,683 to 13,026, while the number of victims decreased from 14,243 to 13,438.
Using a separate dataset limited to agencies that supplied at least six comparable months of information in both years, the FBI calculated a 7 per cent decline in reported incidents, from 11,404 in 2024 to 10,606 in 2025.
The documents did not provide separate 2024 figures for anti-Sikh, anti-Hindu or anti-Asian offences. A year-to-year comparison for those communities therefore cannot be made from the published national summary.
Of the 12,567 single-bias offences reported in 2025, 57.3 per cent involved race, ethnicity or ancestry. Religious bias accounted for 21.5 per cent, followed by sexual orientation at 14.6 per cent.
About 66.6 per cent of all hate crime offences were crimes against people. Another 31.5 per cent involved property, while 1.9 per cent were classified as crimes against society.
Among offences against people, 43.1 per cent involved intimidation and 35.8 per cent were simple assaults. Destruction, damage or vandalism accounted for 73.3 per cent of hate crimes against property.
The FBI’s hate crime collection received information from 16,791 law enforcement agencies covering 95.3 per cent of the US population. Agencies submitted between one and 12 months of information, and 3,067 reported at least one hate crime incident.
–IANS
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