Intervening in a domestic violence scenario is challenging, and the act of helping victims of abuse has become exceedingly difficult with the onset of COVID-19. During lockdowns, women end up trapped with perpetrators of domestic violence, severely restricting the means of seeking help. Bystanders can play an important role in providing assistance, and the motivation to intervene depends on various underlying factors. The uncertainty caused by the pandemic has encouraged people to find solace and hope in religion and spirituality. Using goal congruity and priming theories, we treated religiosity and spirituality as separate constructs and investigated their impact on attitude toward helping victims and intention to engage in direct intervention (i.e. knocking on the door) or indirect intervention (i.e. calling the advertised helpline) among Hindus in India. Findings show that only spirituality influenced intention, via attitude, to engage in indirect intervention, while only religiosity directly influenced intention to engage in direct intervention. In terms of goal congruity, priming the advertised intervention (i.e. direct or indirect) triggered the salience of one’s religious (i.e. ego-driven self-enhancement) or spiritual (i.e. altruism) goals. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.