Christians stripped and paraded naked, accused of conversion in India
A Christian, who witnessed the incident, called it a ‘horrible and heartbreaking’
Updated: June 25, 2025 12:27 PM GMT
Christians in central Indian Madhya Pradesh state have sought action against right-wing Hindu activists who allegedly assaulted and paraded naked four socially poor Dalit Christians in a village and forced them to bow before a Hindu temple deity.
About 150 Hindu activists entered the house of a pastor on the night of June 22 in Nepa Nagar village in Burhanpur district and assaulted him along with three other Christians, according to local Pastor Gokhariya Solanky.
“The activists undressed them, attacked them, and used foul language to abuse them before parading them naked in their underwear along a public road,” Solanky told UCA News on June 25, a day after filing a complaint with top officials of the district police and administration.
“They also took them to the local Hindu temple and made them bow before the deity there,” Solanky said.
The activists accused the Christians of attempting to convert Dalit Hindus to Christianity and handed three of them over to the police. They also released one man after discovering he was connected with some members of the group, Solanky said.
“Police presented the three to a local court on June 24, which remanded them in jail,” said Solanky, who is working with lawyers to bail them out.
He and other Christian leaders said fake conversion charges are routinely imposed on Christians by Hindu groups, who work to turn India into a nation of Hindu dominance.
The wives of the attacked men, in their complaint to the top district officials, named 12 of roughly 150 accused men.
“The accused also asked a Hindu couple present at the pastor’s house to give false testimony that the Christians were enticing them to convert to Christianity,” the complaint said.
Solanky said the district police chief “has promised to look into their complaint.”
He added that if justice isn’t served soon, they will turn to public protests and further legal action against the accused and the local police officials who failed to protect them.
“The police officials, instead of protecting the attacked, openly supported the Hindu activists,” said a church member who witnessed what he called a “horrible and heartbreaking” incident.
At least two police constables were walking with the crowd parading the Christians, said the Christian, who did not want to be named for fear of retribution.
The Christian told UCA News on June 25, “The activists are known in the locality. They continue to target indigenous Christians, accusing them of false allegations of religious conversion.”
Daniel John, a Catholic leader based in the capital, Bhopal, said the attack was the “latest of a series of organized Hindu attacks against Christians” in Madhya Pradesh, where the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) runs the state government.
The BJP and Hindu groups that support it view Christian mission activities as a façade to attract poor Hindus, especially gullible tribal and Dalit people who are outside the Hindu four-tier caste system.
“Christian missionary works empower the poor. The right-wing groups, who believe in their caste hegemony, do not want them to come up in life as it challenges the caste hierarchy. Therefore, they target Christians with false allegations of conversion,” John explained to UCA News on June 25.
He also urged the government to take action against crimes targeting Christians and to uphold the religious freedom guaranteed by the constitution, as “Christians also are citizens just like the Hindus,” he said.
Christians make up 0.27 percent of Madhya Pradesh’s more than 72 million people, and the majority, around 80 percent, are Hindus, including over 21 percent of Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).
