Police jailed a pastor and charged him and four other Christians after a mob of Hindu extremists assaulted Christian men, women and children during worship in India in late September, sources said.
In Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh district, 45-year-old pastor Wazir Singh said several Hindu women entered a church building in Nohar city, followed by Hindu men young and old, at around 10 a.m. on September 28 while the congregation was singing in worship.
“They put Hindu women in the lead. Hindu women attacked Christian women, Hindu men attacked Christian men,” Singh told Morning Star News after his release on October 4.
He said the mob forced Singh to sit down and demanded that he teach about Hindu gods such as Rama and Ganesha instead of Christ, and read passages from the Hindu scriptures Ramayana and Mahabharata to the congregation instead of the Bible. “My faith is in Jesus Christ, and my country gives me the right to choose who I want to believe and the freedom to practice my faith,” he replied, and police called the police, who had him arrested.
Pastor Singh’s wife and three other Christians were also named in the police complaint but were not arrested.
“The three Christian men named in the complaint do not belong to my church and were not in my church at the time,” Pastor Singh said, surprised to find their names in the complaint.
The rioters were from the area surrounding the church and were instigated by the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, a Hindu nationalist group with offices in the area, and members of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu nationalist group with offices in the area.
Bajrang Dal members went to the police station and filed a formal complaint. Pastor Singh, his wife Jaspal Parmar and two others, identified only as Pastors Vinod and Bhalla, have been accused of “crimes of inciting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race or location” and “crimes of hurting religious sentiments” under FIR No. 383. A first information report was filed on charges of “intentional and malicious conduct with intent to deceive,” “offering gift or return of property as consideration to a screening violator,” “offering gift to assist in the recovery of stolen property,” and “unlawful conduct.” assembly. ”
The cops took Pastor Singh to Nohar police station and remanded him in custody till the next day, after which he appeared before the District Magistrate (SDM) and was remanded to custody. When he appeared before the magistrate again on October 3, he was refused release after the judge read out a pamphlet submitted as evidence against the pastor.
“It had my name and cell phone number printed on it, and it said, ‘Leave all your idols and come to Jesus Christ,'” Pastor Singh said. “Seeing the pamphlet, she refused my release and I was sent to prison.”
He denied that he or other Christians printed the pamphlet.
“Bajrang Dal members got a pamphlet printed with my name, mobile number and materials to frame me,” said Pastor Singh. “Christians will never print content that demeans other religions or exalts Christianity.”
He said Pastor Singh’s fellow prisoners conspired to assault him when they learned the reason for his arrest.
“They attacked me saying, ‘He is converting people,’ but the Muslim prisoners intervened and rescued me from them,” Pastor Singh told Morning Star News.
He was released on bail the following day, October 4th.
intimidation and confiscation
After his arrest, Hindu neighbors reportedly gathered and threatened his family.
Groups of women and men knocked on the doors of his church building and residence. When Singh’s wife Methu Devi answered the door, a mob swarmed and began attacking the Christians. Inside were 14 Christians supporting her and planning her next steps.
“The mob started brutally beating Christian and when an elderly Christian woman tried to help him, they also beat her,” Devi told Morning Star News. “They also beat me and my young children. They said, ‘We will not let you stay here. If we find you here, we will assault you.'”
Devi said the Christians had good relations with their Hindu neighbors, but the latter had recently begun to show signs of opposition.
“While we were praying in church, they started playing Hanuman Chalisa (a Hindu devotional hymn praising Lord Hanuman) on an amplifier and tried to disrupt our prayer time,” she said.
Devi said her neighbors were talking “friendly” on the outside, but secretly they were “conspiring with the Bajrang Dal to attack us.”
The Hindu mob became even more agitated as they attacked Christians inside the church building, shouting, “A conversion is happening in this house, so we will set this house on fire, along with those who choose to stay. If you want to live, run from this house.”
The wounded Christians fled for their lives.
“I ran away from home with my children and took shelter with another Christian family about half a mile away for two nights,” Devi said.
Their Hindu neighbors learned of their whereabouts and conspired to attack them.
“The Christian hosts and their families were also at risk to protect my family, so I decided to evict them,” Pastor Singh said.
In the middle of the night, Devi and her two sons, ages 14 and 10, rode 80 miles to Haryana on motorbikes with another pastor.
Police reportedly seized Singh’s home, security ID, and mobile phone, and did not return them even after he was released on bail.
“All my belongings are at home and we are left with nothing to live on,” Pastor Singh said.
He had lived in the house for over two years after moving from his home state of Haryana 30 months ago.
“As a family, we fled persecution in our hometown in Haryana and changed homes three times in Rajasthan, facing opposition each time, but nothing like what we experienced this time,” said Pastor Singh.
He and his family converted from Hinduism and became Christians in 2018 after his wife was diagnosed with hepatitis B and doctors gave up hope of her survival. A distant relative spoke about Christ on the phone, and they went to church services.
“We came to believe and my wife was healed. We were able to get rid of all our bad habits like smoking and drug abuse,” Pastor Singh said, adding that he then joined regular fellowship until he felt called by the Lord to start his own fellowship.
Devi said her children have not attended regular school since they left home.
“I looked at my children and wondered how I was going to survive, but I took comfort in God’s words that He will never abandon us,” she said.
Protest against anti-conversion bill
Following the passage of the anti-conversion bill in Rajasthan on September 9, a coalition of civil society organizations held a press conference at Jaipur’s Vinoba Gyan Mandir on September 26 to condemn the bill.
The groups, including Free People’s Federation, Jaipur Christian Union, Rajasthan Samagra Seva Sangh, Civil Rights Protection Society and several religious organizations representing Buddhist, Muslim and Dalit communities, urged the governor to withhold consent under Article 200 of the Constitution and refer the bill to the President.
They argue that the bill violates Articles 14, 19, 21, and 25 of the Constitution, and point out that the governor blocked similar bills in 2006 and 2008 by withholding consent. The Governor of Rajasthan gave his assent on October 3 and the state will take effect on the bill on October 29.Rajasthan will be the state of Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Karna. It is the 12th state to have anti-conversion laws, along with Taka, Jharkhand, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Christian advocacy group Open Doors has ranked India 11th on its Global Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution in 2025. India ranked 31st in 2013, but has steadily fallen in the rankings since Narendra Modi became prime minister.
Religious rights advocates have blamed increasingly hostile rhetoric from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s National Alliance for Democracy government, which has emboldened India’s Hindu extremists since Mr. Modi came to power in May 2014.
