India's general election is being held next month, one that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widely expected to win. But his second term in power has been marked by deepening religious polarization and increasing Islamophobia. There are more than 200 million Muslims in India making up the country's largest religious minority. Members of the Muslim community have told the BBC that they feel they are being marginalized and suppressed, claims consistently denied by India's Hindu Nationalist Government. Our South Asia correspondent, Yogita Limai, reports from Northern India, and you may find the images in her report distressing.

India is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. And while religious fault lines have often stoked tensions. The sense of anxiety within the Muslim minority has rarely ever been as deep as it is now under Mr. Modi's government. On the streets of the capital, Delhi, a policeman assaulted Muslims offering prayers. Just outside Goa, a Muslim man was beaten by a mob, forced to chant the name of a Hindu deity. And in Jaipur, in the Northwest, a family devastated by perhaps the most chilling incident of violence against Muslims in India. Umaisa Begum's husband, the father of their five children, Mohamed Azgar Ali, was among three Muslim passengers shot dead by a railway policeman on a train. If his killer was a Muslim, he would have been hanged by now. But that won't happen because he's a Hindu. Azgar's daughter, Amina said, No one can return my father to us. The constable filmed here, standing with a foot on Azgar's bloodied body, a man who's meant to protect people, issues a threat seemingly to India's Muslims. We know your masters are in Pakistan, but if you want to live here, vote for Prime Minister Modi.

The policeman is being tried for murder, but it's rattled the community.

Human rights groups have recently raised concerns about what they say are illegal demolitions targeted specifically at Muslim homes, businesses, and places of worship in different parts of India. Behind me here is the debris of a mosque in South Delhi. Next to it, there was a Muslim religious school. Now, historians have said that this mosque was at least 600 years old. The government, however, says these were illegal structures and destroyed it all.

The school was home to dozens of children, most of them orphans. Seen in these videos, filmed by their teachers before the demolition, they're now scattered. We met 12-year-old Mohamed Zeeshan, temporarily housed at another Islamic school. I feel fear whenever I think of that moment, he said, of bulldozers and policemen. They forced us out and didn't allow us to take even our shoes. It was a cold winter morning. The Indian government didn't respond to the BBC's questions. But we met Zafar Islam, a Muslim spokesman from the Prime Minister's Party.

It is the opposition parties who are using Muslim community as a shield. They are feeling the hate. Muslim community is absolutely comfortable. They're happy.

But, sir, people have told us this. We have recorded this. Ordinary people not political parties.

See, if one or two people say such thing, it cannot be true for the entire community.

The ruling party doesn't have a single MP from the country's largest minority. Just one more factor that contributes to the unease we found on the ground.

There is a very major sense of insecurity here, right? For example, if you take your mic and you walk around here, there won't be many people who would be looking to talk to you.

The most beautiful thing about India is its diversity, but that is now being crushed, and the main victims are Muslims.

Critics see the upcoming election as an inflection point for India's long-cherished secular ideals. Yoghitalma, BBC News, Delhi.