A fact-finding mission to India’s Kashmir Valley found that Muslim leaders’ increasingly shrill opposition to conversions has instilled fear among the Christian minority, which has been threatened as Christmas nears.

Christians in Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s northern-most state of Jammu and Kashmir, are “really scared,” said Dr. John Dayal, a member of the National Integration Council and part of the fact-finding team.

Charges that a pastor “lured” Muslims to Christianity by offering money are false and have put the lives of the clergyman and other Christians in danger, according to Bishop Pradeep Kumar Samantaroy of the Church of North India denomination.

The allegations of allurement appear to have turned Muslim clergy and separatist leaders against the Christians.

Muslims in Kashmir, in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, are supporting the re-building of a Christian school that was destroyed by fire during anti-Christian violence one year ago.

On 13 September, 2010, the Tyndale Biscoe School was the target of Muslims protesting a reported desecration of the Quran in the U.S. that marked the ninth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks.

Girls escaping deadly anti-Christian violence in India’s volatile state of Orissa face sexual after human traffickers falsely promise them a better life, human rights investigators claim.

At least four girls have been trafficked to India’s metropolis Delhi where they were “sold” to a placement agency, according to advocacy groups All India Christian Council (AICC) and Human Rights Law Network’s Anti-Human Trafficking Initiatives.

India’s Supreme Court stepped in at the last minute to delay the issuance of a verdict that was to decide whether Hindus or Muslims had rights to a controversial religious site in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

The Indian government prepared extensively for the ruling on the Babri Masjid site, where a Hindu mob destroyed a mosque in 1992 sparking widespread rioting nationwide that left an estimated 2,000 people dead. Since then, the government deployed thousands of troops to the site, taken out ads in newspapers appealing for calm in the wake of the verdict, and officials asked the public to handle the verdict without knee jerk reactions.

Though there was a mosque on the site in 1992, many Hindus believe that the site is the birthplace of Lord Ram and that a temple once existed there.

India is bracing for a historic verdict Friday on whether Hindus or Muslims have rights to a disputed religious site, in a test of whether the issue will stir passions as it did in 1992, when a mosque at the site was destroyed by a Hindu mob and an estimated 2,000 people died in rioting that followed.

Since then, the Babri Masjid, a mosque in the town of Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh, has come to represent the deep and violent divisions that occasionally erupt within India’s multifaith democracy.

As many as 200 women are lynched every year in India after being accused of practising witchcraft, a study by a charity has found.

Avdhash Kaushal, chairman of the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra, said that most victims were single or widowed and were often targeted for their land or money.

Karnataka – once a symbol of India’s economic progress and of freedom – has now become a hub of right-wing Hindu extremism, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India.

Christian investigators say Christian persecution increased after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became Karnataka’s main ruling party in 2008.

A pastor and his wife remained behind bars Friday, December 18, after they were mistreated by militants and police detained them for “forceful” conversion of Hindus to Christianity in India’s state of Karnataka, Christians said.

Church groups have reported increased pressure on Christians in several states where authorities have been cracking down on what they view as “forced” conversions by missionaries and church leaders.

After the recent arrests of numerous Hindu terrorists for exploding bombs, authorities increasingly view Hindu rightwing extremists as a threat not only to Muslim and Christian minorities but also to national security.

Historically Hindu terrorist groups have traded blows with India’s Muslim extremists, but because of a perceived threat from Christianity many analysts believe Hindu terrorists increasingly pose dangers to Christians as well.

Evangelical Christians in India’s eastern state of Andhra Pradesh faced the difficult task Sunday, May 10, of rebuilding their church after suspected anti-Christian militants torched the building, the latest in a series of attacks against churches in the area, investigators said.

The latest incident has underscored an anti-Christian climate in several parts of India.

With elections underway in India, its 2.3 percent Christian minority – which faced a deadly spate of attacks in the eastern state of Orissa last year – is praying for a secular party to come to power.

Along with the Muslim community, Christians fear that if the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies form the next government or an ideologically loose coalition comes to the helm, their already compromised welfare may further deteriorate.

A belief in witches and the evils purportedly wrought by them – from famine to sporting failure – is widespread among tribal communities in the country’s impoverished rural hinterland.

It is estimated that 750 people, mostly elderly women, have been killed in witch-hunts in the states of Assam and West Bengal since 2003.

Also: Some academics claim that witch-hunts are an economic phenomenon.

Related: 16-year-old girl was beaten to death by villagers.