A Christian doctor in India has been suspended from working with COVID-19 patients due to allegations of attempted forced conversion.
Dr. Sandhya Tiwari also faces criminal charges after offering prayers of healing to her patients. Tiwari has been part of Madhya Pradesh State’s “Kill Corona” Program.
Police reportedly confiscated the doctor’s mobile phone after receiving a complaint from a local man who reportedly took offense from Tiwari’s actions.
In a short video, currently making rounds on social media, the doctor defended her actions, saying, “What is wrong in telling them that God heals? I did not tell anybody to convert or forced anybody to pray to Jesus, I am being a Christian, I told them that Jesus heals.”
Anti-conversion laws are widely abused in India by radical Hindu nationalists looking to harass religious minorities, said International Christian Concern (ICN), an ecumenical human rights group.
Christians are often falsely accused of forceful conversions to justify assault and intimidate believers.
Since the enactment of Madhya Pradesh’s anti-conversion law, now known as the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act 2021, incidents of religious attacks have surged in the state and police have reportedly done little to protect minorities.
Meanwhile, an associate of a popular yoga guru in India claimed on twitter that COVID-19 is “a conspiracy to convert the entire country to Christianity and turn them against yoga and Ayurveda.”
A report from AsiaNews identified Acharya Balkrishna, chairman of Patanjali, a large company that makes Ayurvedic products, as an associate of popular TV yoga guru Ramdev.
Ramdev has recently been in loggerheads with the Indian Medical Association (IMA) over the effectiveness of Ayurvedic medicines against the coronavirus disease.
Ramdev claimed that conventional medicine cause the death of thousands of people in the country. “Indians should refuse conventional therapies and use instead Patanjali’s Ayurvedic remedies,” he said.
IMA has already filed a complaint against the yoga guru for spreading false information, especially during a pandemic.
Balkrishna, howeverm posted the picture of IMA president Dr. J A Jayalal on social media with a caption: “Doctor or pastor?”
Father Babu Joseph, former spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, said that “one cannot find even a remote connection between what the IMA president said and Christianity.”
On Sunday, India reported its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections in 46 days at 165,553 cases during the previous 24 hours, while deaths rose by 3,460.
The South Asian nation’s tally of infections now stands at 27.9 million, with the death toll reaching 325,972, health ministry data showed.
