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 per a pre-planned script,” John alleged while adding that Jitendra Kumar, a right-wing Hindu leader had earlier sent his supporters to the prayer hall and filed a complaint.

In his complaint, Kumar alleged that Pastor James conducted special prayers on Fridays and Sundays which hundreds of people attended.

He accused the pastor of offering Rs 45,000 (US$549) and jobs to the people for becoming Christians.

“We never converted anyone by offering jobs and money,” John said.

Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, is among the 11 provincial states which have enacted the draconian law that bans religious conversion through allurement, force, and coercion.

The state is ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act prescribes one to ten years in prison besides hefty fines for those guilty of illegal conversion.

The law also forbids inter-religious marriages and is often called by people as the “anti-Love Jihad Law.”

Love Jihad is a conspiracy theory alleged by hardline Hindu groups accusing Muslim men of courting Hindu women with the aim of marrying and converting them to Islam.

Christian leaders said that since the enactment of the law in 2021, the life of Christians has become miserable.

“Practicing Christianity has become dangerous in our state as anyone can be jailed for violating the anti-conversion law,” said Dinanath Jaiswal, a social worker who assists Christians facing persecution.

“Right-wing Hindu groups grossly misuse the anti-conversion law and create troubles for Christians by registering false cases,” Jaiswal told UCA News on July 24.

>Uttar Pradesh tops the list among Indian states in persecuting Christians.

It recorded 155 incidents of violence against Christians in the past six months, said New Delhi-based United Christian Forum (UCF), which tracks violence against Christians across the country.

During the same period, 400 incidents of violence against Christians were recorded in the country, said UCF.

In its report, UCF said that in most incidents police do not register cases against the perpetrators.

Christians make up a mere 0.18 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s more than 20 million people, mostly Hindus

The article is published on ucanews.com