Two Christians, including pastor, jailed in India’s Uttar Pradesh

An Indian court has remanded two Christians, including a Protestant minister, into judicial custody after they were accused of attempting to convert 150 Hindus to Christianity in northern Indian Uttar Pradesh state.

Christian leaders say Pastor Rajesh Kumar and another Christian, identified only as Kundan, were arrested by police on Nov. 9 while they were at a Sunday prayer service in Bhayapurwa village in Shravasti district, near the Nepal border.

The duo was charged under provisions of Uttar Pradesh’s stringent anti-conversion law, along with two others, also identified by their single names as Shakha and Ravi, who were the co-accused but not yet arrested.

Police claimed to have seized “incriminating documents,” such as copies of the holy Bible, other Christian literature, posters, identity cards, baptismal certificates, bank passbooks, calling them “evidence of mass religious conversion” attempt.

District Superintendent of Police Rahul Bhati told media persons the accused used to target poor people, offering them food and financial support.

Some 21 bank passbooks seized from them will help trace “the money trail behind the conversion racket,” he said

Uttar Pradesh has become a hotbed for Christian persecution, especially since the state government, run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), enacted the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act in 2021.

“More than 500 Christians were jailed under this anti-conversion law. This year alone, close to 250 have been put behind bars for their faith in Christ,” a Church leader who did not want to be named told UCA News on Nov. 13.

Police register false cases, portraying even Sunday prayer gatherings in individual houses and house Churches as conversion activity, he alleged.

“This trend of targeting small prayer gatherings gained momentum after the constitutional validity of the state’s anti-conversion law was challenged in the Supreme Court of India,” he noted.

Even while the constitutionality of the original law was under scrutiny in the country’s top court, the state government in 2024 amended the law, imposing a 20-year-to-life term in prison for forced or fraudulent conversion.

The amended provisions have also been challenged, but the Supreme Court has not granted a stay on the implementation of the original law and its amendments.

“What we see is gross misuse of the anti-conversion law to target the minuscule Christian community, apparently, to justify an unconstitutional law in the Supreme Court,” said Pastor Joy Mathew.

Mathew, who is based in the state and assists persecuted Christians in fighting their cases, said there were possibly around 150 people at the village prayer gathering in Bhayapurwa.

“So, the police are trying to falsely convey that there was an attempt to convert them,” he added.

A C Michael, national convenor of the New Delhi-based United Christian Forum (UCF), said the case appeared to be politically motivated with no legal standing to sustain in any court of law.

“Fact is, till today, not a single conviction has taken place in any court across India as far as forceful conversions are concerned,” the lay leader, who is a former member of the Delhi state minority commission, said.

Uttar Pradesh has recorded 209 incidents of persecution against Christians in 2024, which is the highest in any Indian state. The country recorded a total of 843 such incidents during the same period, according to UCF, an ecumenical body that records persecutions against Christians.

Christians make up less than one percent of more than 200 million people in the state, the majority of them followers of the Hindu religion.

This article was originally published on Two Christians, including pastor, jailed in India’s Uttar Pradesh