United Against Hate (UAH), a group of activists and civil society members from across India, launched a helpline for victims of hate crimes and mob attacks on Tuesday.

According to an Al Jazeera, this exercise is aimed at documenting such cases of hate crime and subsequently providing legal aid to victims.

The group said that its activists will work in nearly 100 Indian cities to provide help and assistance to hate crime victims—the majority of them Muslims—who comprise 14 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion population. It also said that the initiative was required as India’s federal and state governments had failed to prevent such incidents. 

“We are launching a toll-free helpline 1800-3133-60000 in view of rising cases of mob attacks and hate crimes in the country,” said activist Nadeem Khan, at the event in the capital New Delhi. He added that the helpline would work round the clock.

“We will try to help the victims of such assaults and help them get justice in courts,” said Khan. “The state and central governments have only made statements on such incidents. Despite all the claims of the government, the assaults have not stopped.”

The Al Jazeera report said that lawyers, social workers, professors, journalists and religious leaders, who were present at the event, said that there was a “dire need” of such an initiative.

UAH hopes that the launch of this helpline will help victims to access legal recourse.

The US had last month released a report on international religious freedoms in which it said that the Hindu Right has “facilitated an egregious and ongoing campaign of violence, intimidation and harassment against non-Hindu and lower-caste Hindu minorities”.

The report was subsequently rejected by India, who said it saw “no locus standi (legal right) for a foreign government to pronounce on the state of our citizens’ constitutionally protected rights”.