A woman attends a mass inside a church on Easter Day in New Delhi March 31, 2013. Holy Week is celebrated in many Christian traditions during the week before Easter. | (Photo: Reuters/Mansi Thapliyal)
A Christian woman who was eight months pregnant lost her baby after Hindu extremists attacked her, pushing her to the ground and kicking her stomach in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state.
Morning Star News reports that a group of Christians in Dewada village, Barwani District had organized a church service of thanksgiving and prayer ahead of the New Year. The service, planned from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., was open to all, and a celebration meal was planned for the afternoon of Jan. 1.
Supporters of All India Christian Council pray during a rally in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, May 29, 2007. The activists demanded protection from violence by right-wing Hindu organizations and safeguarding of their religious rights. | (Photo: AP / Gurinder Osan)
As part of Hindu nationalists’ ongoing campaign to stop India’s tribal, or indigenous, people from converting to Christianity, a rightwing Hindu leader has demanded that all churches be closed down in a district in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
Azad Prem Singh, a leader of the Hindu nationalist group the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the World Hindu Council, handed over a memorandum to the administrative head of Jhabua district, demanding that all churches be banned in tribal areas, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported Sunday.
Indian Catholic devotees offer the way of the cross prayers after an Ash Wednesday service at Saint Mary s Basilica in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad, on March 5, 2014. | AFP via Getty Images/Noah Seelam
Police in the southern Indian state of Karnataka have banned 15 Christian families from gathering for worship services based on the presumption that they must have been coercively or fraudulently converted to Christianity as they are not Christian by birth.
The deputy superintendent of police of Karnataka’s Hassan District and his colleagues summoned the families in Bannimardatti village this week and asked them to prove that they were Christian, accusing them of availing benefits provided by the government as both Christians and Hindus, persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported.
Christians meet near their rebuilt church in Kandhamal. In 2008, almost every church in the area was destroyed by Hindu nationalists. | John Fredricks
Three unidentified men shot and killed a pastor in the east Indian state of Jharkhand while he was returning home with his wife after baptizing new believers, according to a report.
Pastor Salim Stephen Surin, a part-time evangelist in Rania village of Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district, was killed on Dec. 8, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported Friday.
“They killed my husband in front of my own eyes,” Tarsis, the wife of the slain pastor, was quoted as saying. “I was terrified seeing my husband collapse having been shot in the chest. I started to think about my children and loudly cried out to God to save me and take care of my [two] children.”
Catholic devotees wear face mask attend the Holy Mass at the Saint Joseph s Church on the first day after the reopening of religious services after the government eased restrictions imposed as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Hyderabad on June 8, 2020. | NOAH SEELAM/AFP via Getty Images
Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, has approved a controversial anti-conversion law that experts warn will “incite more religiously motivated violence” as attacks on Indian Christians and other religious minorities continue to escalate.
According to persecution watchdog International Christian Concern, the Uttar Pradesh state Cabinet, presided over by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, approved a draft ordinance in November that s purportedly intended to curb forcible or dishonest religious conversions.