PASTOR, WIFE, AND CHILD JAILED IN INDIA FOR PRAYING AT HOME
A pastor, his wife, and their three-year-old son have been imprisoned in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after holding a prayer service in their home. Pastor Harendra Singh and his wife Priya were taken into custody charged with ‘luring innocent people to Christianity’. The couple had no choice but to bring their young child with them into prison. This family’s plight is the latest in a series of arrests involving believers in Uttar Pradesh. One Christian leader lamented, ‘The situation has reached such a stage that holding a prayer service or reading the Bible at home can land you in jail.’ Arrested That same day another pastor, Amarjeet Ram, and 14 other Christians were arrested during a prayer meeting in Balapur village. And seven other Christians were arrested separately in two incidents in other districts of the state over the same period. State law prohibits religious conversion through allurement, force, or coercion. But given the law’s catch-all wording and its intent to discriminate against religions other than Hinduism, baseless accusations can lead to charges even when no inducement has occurred. Uttar Pradesh ranks as the state with the highest level of persecution against Christians in India. Successive states have passed similarly worded anti-conversion laws and there
Indian pastor, six others arrested on ‘conversion’ charges
The police in northern Uttar Pradesh state arrived during the Sunday service and also sealed the prayer hall Seven Christians, including a pastor and a woman, were arrested and their prayer hall was sealed by police in a northern Indian state for alleged violation of the stringent anti-conversion law. Police in northern Uttar Pradesh state interrupted a Sunday prayer service on July 23 at Badesar village in Ghazipur district. They took the pastor and six others to the police station, where they were retained for a night. All seven were presented in a local court on July 24 and were remanded in judicial custody. “It is totally a false case against our people,” said Vikrant Kumar John, son of arrested pastor Vinod Kumar James, who heads the Protestant James Prarthana Bhavan (Prayer Hall) at Badesar. >John told UCA News on July 25 that a 50-strong police team came during the Sunday service. “They rushed inside the church and stopped the prayer service, accusing us of conducting religious conversion,” he said. They also seized copies of the Bible and other Christian books, he added. Nearly 700 people were attending the service. They arrested the pastor and six others and allowed the others to go home. "The police seemed to be acting as
Woman stripped and raped in Manipur speaks: Police were with the mob, they left us with those men
'The police were there with the mob which was attacking our village. The police picked us up from near home, and took us a little away from the village and left us on the road with the mob. We were given to them by police.' A day after a video of two women from the Kuki-Zomi community being paraded naked and sexually assaulted in Manipur surfaced, one of the victims told The Indian Express that they had been “left to the mob by the police”. Two women, one in her 20s and the other in her 40s, can be seen being made to walk naked down a road and towards a field by a mob of men. Some of the men can be seen dragging the two women towards a field and forcibly groping them. In a police complaint that was filed on May 18, the victims had also alleged that the younger woman was “brutally gang raped in the broad daylight”. In the complaint, they had said that they had fled to a forest for shelter after their village in Kangpokpi district, was attacked by a mob and that they were later rescued by Thoubal police and were being taken to the
Christian arrested, accused of converting Dalits in India
Police in a northern Indian state have arrested a Christian man for allegedly converting 230 families of Dalits (former untouchables). Uttar Pradesh state's police arrested Bajrang Rawat on July 17. He was accused of converting the Dalit families to Christianity by promising to cure their ailments, said a report by Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency. Rawat has been illegally living on railway land in Barabanki, 27 kilometers from the state capital Lucknow, along with other poor families since the past year, Akhilesh Narayan Singh, an additional superintendent of police, told the media. Copies of the Bible and other Christian books were recovered from Rawat’s house while a probe was on to ascertain the involvement of other people in helping him, Singh said. “We have been in contact with Singh, who is investigating the case, and it is too early to comment,” Christian activist Minakshi Singh told UCA News on July 19. “There are several unanswered questions," said Minakshi Singh, general secretary of the charity Unity in Compassion based in Uttar Pradesh. There are questions like "why Rawat, who is from Lucknow, was staying in Barabanki on railway land? Who are the Dalits? Are they Hindus or from other faiths?" She also expressed doubts if "the religious conversion had taken place" or if "it was just propaganda by some group?" All this will
A Troubling Trend for Religious Freedom in India
While freedom of religion is integral to our American pluralist life, many countries experience religious oppression through anti-conversion laws. These laws intend to elevate the state-endorsed religion; codified laws forbid individuals from changing from the majority religion to a minority one, particularly Christianity and Islam. India, Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan have anti-conversion laws. Recently, there has been growing concern about officials enacting new, more restrictive, and discriminatory laws in India. India is the birthplace of many world religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. In 1950, the nation adopted a Western-style secular democracy. The country is home to thousands of ethnic groups and nearly two dozen official languages. Out of this diversity, one would expect ethnic and religious tolerance to reign. Recently, Hindu nationalism has become a growing force politically. Hindu nationalists subscribe to the Hindutva, or ideology that only Hindus are true Indians and that all other religions, especially Christians and Muslims, are foreigners who must be expelled. India’s People’s Party (BJP) won the national election in 2014. Known Hindu nationalists, including Prime Minister Modi, lead the party. At a conference in 2021, Hindu Mahasabha political party leader Pooja Shakun Pandey and other Hindu leaders made hate-filled remarks about
