Category: India

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.

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.

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.

Four Christians, including three evangelists and a police officer, have been jailed in India’s central state of Chhattisgarh for “converting” Hindus to Christianity, after they were injured in an attack by Hindu militants, Christian officials confirmed Saturday April 17.

In statements, Hindu militants defended their actions saying they were also attacked by Christians and suffering injuries.

Reason? He wanted to appease the presiding deity of the sect the family follows.