Christian prayer service attacked in India’s Odisha

A group of Christian worshippers in the eastern Indian state of Odisha is living in fear after being attacked by a tribal Hindu mob, which disrupted their Sunday prayer and told them to stop praying to Jesus.

Members of the Christian Evangelical Assembly were attacked by a mob of around 50 people while they had gathered for a Sunday service around 9 am on Feb. 22.

“They told us that our prayers were making their gods and goddesses unhappy and ordered us to stop,” said Pastor Jagannath Naik, who was hosting the small congregation at his house in Badabali Chua village of Mayurbhanj district.

Naik said the mob, which was armed with sticks, stormed into his house. Some of them appeared to be under the influence of alcohol, he alleged.

The mob attacked his wife first, and when he tried to record the incident on his mobile phone, they pushed him to the ground and began kicking him.
An elderly woman who stepped in to intervene was also assaulted.

“I was forced to delete the video of the attack,” the pastor said.

Naik said they dialled the police emergency helpline number but were told that officers were busy responding to a road accident and would arrive later.

“But no police officer reached out to help us till now,” he added.

The next day, on Feb. 23, the members of the mob began to approach the Christians individually, threatening further violence if they “did not stop worshipping Jesus.”

“Christians in the area are scared, and many are considering leaving their homes out of fear for their safety,” said Bishop Pallab Lima, who heads the United Believers Council Network India, an ecumenical body.

The situation in the village remains extremely tense, Lima told UCA News on Feb. 24.

He noted that Mayurbhanj district is a particularly sensitive area for Christians, and criticized the local authorities, especially the police, for failing to act despite being informed about the mob attack.

Father Madan Sual Singh, a Catholic priest from the Catholic Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, recalled that the area witnessed the killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, who were burned alive in 1999 in Manoharpur village.

He warned that even minor incidents there could “quickly escalate into a serious law-and-order problem.”

Singh urged small groups of worshippers in remote areas to exercise caution, since the state was seeing a growing pattern of intimidation and violence against Christians since the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power in the state in June 2024.

In 2024, Odisha recorded 40 incidents of Christian harassment, including disrupting prayer services in churches, denying burial of their dead, and social boycott in villages, according to data released by United Christian Forum (UCF), a New Delhi-based ecumenical body that tracks cases of persecution against Christians in India.

The UCF described this as “a disturbing trend,” adding that the primary reason for targeting Christians was the false propaganda of fraudulent religious conversions, mainly carried out in BJP-ruled states.

Christians make up 2.77 percent of the state’s 42 million people, over 90 percent of whom are Hindus and indigenous people.

Kandhamal district witnessed the worst-ever anti-Christian riot in August 2008, in which over 100 Christians were killed over seven weeks.

It also left 300 churches destroyed, 6,000 Christian homes looted, and rendered over 56,000 Christians homeless.

This article was originally published on https://www.ucanews.com/news/christian-prayer-service-attacked-in-indias-odisha/111995