Six Christians were jailed in a northern Indian state for allegedly violating the stringent anti-conversion law on Jan. 27, the day India’s top court advocated for leniency in granting bail, especially in cases of alleged religious conversion.
The six Protestant Christians were arrested by the Dhan Ghata police in Uttar Pradesh’s Sant Kabir Nagar district on Jan. 26. They were produced the following day in a local court, which sent them to judicial custody.
The arrested were charged with holding a prayer gathering to convert local people on a complaint filed by a right-wing Hindu activist Saurabh Singh, who leads a cow protection group in the area.
Singh, in his complaint, accused the Christians of offering monetary allurements to convert poor people and “painting a negative picture of Hindu deities.”
“The charges leveled in the complaint are baseless,” said a Church leader who did not want to be named for fear of retribution from Hindu activists.
Some 18 Christians, including pastors, have been jailed in January so far for violating the state’s anti-conversion law, he told UCA News on Jan. 29.
Close to 100 Christians are in prison in conversion-related cases across the state, awaiting bail from the local courts and the high court, the state’s top court, he added.
The arrest and remanding came as the Supreme Court on Jan. 27 reminded the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh to “exercise its discretion judiciously” to grant bail in such cases.
“Trial courts seldom muster the courage of granting bail, be it any offense. However, at least, it was expected of the high court to muster the courage and exercise its discretion judiciously,” said the bench of Justice J B Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan.
The Supreme Court judges said this while granting bail to a Muslim man, Maulvi Syed Shad Kazmi, who was languishing in jail for close to a year after being charged under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.
Pastor Joy Mathew, who keeps track of cases related to alleged conversion, said, “The practice of arrest and judicial remand continues” in Uttar Pradesh.
“The police arrest Christians based on any complaint and without any prima facie verification leading to their prolonged incarceration,” he told UCA News.
Church leaders in the state said the arrests were part of an organized and targeted campaign against Christians.
The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi runs the government in Uttar Pradesh, India‘s most populous state.
It recorded 209 anti-Christian incidents in 2024, the highest in any Indian state, according to the New Delhi-based United Christian Forum (UCF), which tracks violence against Christians across the country.
Christians make up a mere 0.18 percent of the 200 million people in the state, the majority of them Hindus, while Muslims make up 19 percent.