India: police in Hindu state charge Christian adults with ‘attempted conversion’ of children

May 30, 2017

On two separate occasions, police in India’s Madhya Pradesh state have detained Christians and charged them with the “attempted conversion” of children—although the children came from Christian families.

On May 21 and 22, police stopped buses carrying children to a summer camp run by Christians, and arrested the adults who were accompanying them. A police official said that the children’s parents had not filed the necessary paperwork to register their change of religion, and so they and their children were classified as Hindus.

The state of Madhya Pradesh is overwhelmingly Hindu, with Christians accounting for less than 1 percent of the population. The state, controlled by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has seen a number of incidents in which Hindu fundamentalists charged Christian missionaries with using inducements to persuade poor people to accept the Christian faith.

 

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Further information:

• Christian children detained in India, state claims they are Hindu under the law (Crux)