Five people, including a pastor, have been jailed for religious conversion in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Police said Pastor Gerald Massey Mathews of the Dasna Church, and the others were arrested for converting people under the pretext of curing their illnesses and offering their children a quality education.
Uttar Pradesh is ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which enacted a sweeping anti-conversion law in 2020.
“The police arrested Pastor Mathews and others on Sept. 23 and kept them in custody for more than 24 hours and on Sept. 25 sent them to jail in Dasna without giving any details,” Christian activist Minakshi Singh told UCA News on Sept. 25.
“The police have kept us in the dark,” said Singh, general secretary of Unity in Compassion, a charity based in Uttar Pradesh.
The Christian lay leader said the sweeping anti-conversion law was enacted by the right-wing government without “proper study.”
This story was originally published in ucanews.com. Read the full story here.