A group of Hindu radicals attacked about 50 Christians who were attending Sunday service in India’s Mau district in Uttar Pradesh state on October 10.
A report on Matters India said the attackers belong to the Bajrang Dal (party of the stout and strong) and Hindu Yuva Vahini, a youth group.
The group took the Christians and brought them to a police station where they were detained.
The pastor and seven others, including three women, were later sent to jail for allegedly attempting forced religious conversion.
Two Ursuline Franciscan nuns were also reported to have been harassed on the same day and forcibly taken to a police station. They were later released.
Sister Gracy Monteiro, who is working in Mirpur Catholic mission, told Matters India that she had gone to the bus stand to help her companion Sister Roshni Minj to board a bus to Varanasi.
Sister Minj was going home to visit her ailing father in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. As Minj went to ask about the bus, some Hindu radicals attacked the driver and forced the nuns to walk to the police station, where the Sunday worshipers were already detained.
Vijendra Rajbhar, a Christian leader, said the nuns were not part of the prayer meeting as insisted by the Hindu radicals.
Since 2017, as many as 374 cases of persecution of Christians were reported from almost every district of Uttar Pradesh.
Read details of this story on Matters India
