Four Indian Christians arrested for alleged conversion
Police in Uttar Pradesh in northern India have arrested four Christians after they were accused of violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.
“Our four faithful were arrested on May 12 after they were accused of attempting to convert gullible indigenous people with job offers and financial aid,” said a Church official providing legal help to the victims.
They were arrested and taken to Chandan Chawki police station in Lakhimpur Kheri district in the state, which witnesses high levels of persecution against Christians, according to rights activists.
The four were remanded in custody the following day. Efforts to secure their bail were still ongoing, according to the Church official, who did not wish to be named.
This was the latest in a series of arrests of Christians for alleged violations of the anti-conversion law, which carries up to 20 years in jail.
The arrests came despite the Indian Supreme Court on May 2 agreeing to hear a petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion (Amendment) Act, 2024.
“Even a simple gathering of our people in their homes for prayer has been portrayed as a violation of the anti-conversion law,” the Church official said, adding that “our people are dragged into police stations and false cases are registered against them.”
Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with more than 200 million people, recorded 50 incidents of persecution against Christians from January to April this year, according to the ecumenical group, United Christian Forum (UCF), which tracks persecution of Christians. Christians account for 0.18 percent of the state’s population.
During this period, 245 attacks against Christians were reported across the country.
Christians feel “most unsafe” in states run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said A. C. Michael from the UCF.
“The politics of polarization of people on religious lines has resulted in the rise in attacks against Christians,” Michael told UCA News.
He alleged that persecution of minorities, including Christians, has risen sharply across India since Modi’s BJP came to power in 2014.
At least 11 Indian states, mostly ruled by the BJP, have passed tough anti-conversion laws.
Christian leaders and rights activists say these laws are tools to persecute minorities by right-wing Hindu groups and have called on the Supreme Court to declare them unconstitutional.
Christians make up just 2.3 percent of Hindu-majority India’s more than 1.4 billion people.
This article was originally published on https://www.ucanews.com/news/four-indian-christians-arrested-for-alleged-conversion/109017
