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Opposition leaders, including Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal, criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday after Christian priests from Kerala were allegedly assaulted in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur after being accused of forced religious conversions, reported The Hindu.
The Opposition leaders condemned the incident, calling it an example of increasing communal violence under the BJP’s rule. The BJP is the ruling party in Madhya Pradesh.
Members from the Congress and other Opposition parties brought up the issue in the Lok Sabha on Thursday and walked out of the chamber after Speaker Om Birla refused to allow a discussion. Congress MPs, led by Venugopal, also protested inside Parliament.
The Jabalpur Police said the incident took place on March 31 at the Ranjhi police station premises during an inquiry into allegations made by Hindutva group Vishva Hindu Parishad about the forced religious conversion of Adivasi persons from Mandla district.
According to Jabalpur Superintendent of Police Sampat Upadhyay, a first information report against three unidentified persons was filed and witness statements were being recorded, reported The Indian Express. The police stated that a separate investigation into the conversion allegations was underway.
The incident involved two Christian priests who visited the police station after the police detained a bus taking about 50 persons from Maharajpur village in Mandla, along with a priest and a nun, on suspicion of forced religious conversions.
The bus was intercepted by members of a Hindutva group and taken to the police station. The police said the passengers identified as Christians but had Hindu identities in their documents. After verification, they were allowed to leave.
A video circulating on social media purportedly shows a woman slapping one of the priests while the police escorted him to safety. However, Upadhyay denied that the priests were assaulted, stating, “There were some arguments between the two sides, which led to pushing.”
George Davis, founder of St Aloysius Institute of Technology, was identified as the priest in the video.
“We must uphold the rule of law, not lawlessness,” he told The Indian Express. “If vigilante groups are allowed to take charge, what is the need for police? This ‘might is right’ mentality has become the norm, and it’s unacceptable.”
Aarti Shukla, the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s district coordinator, alleged that the Adivasis were being forcibly converted to Christianity, claiming: “You can see their dressing and lifestyle; it’s all Hindu style.”
“I can claim that they are Hindus and have been lured here with force and threats to convert them,” Shukla told The Hindu.
Criticising the incident, Vijayan alleged that the priests, originally from Kerala, had visited the police station to help the Adivasis but were “beaten up as police watched”. He termed the act as “extremely heinous” and said that increasing instances of communal violence were a threat to India’s secular fabric.
Venugopal told reporters that the incident was “another example” of how the “BJP government and Sangh Parivar are attacking minorities”. He alleged that 753 churches were attacked in the past year, and accused the government of failing to act.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad is part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP.
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