The leaders of Bhandardigi village in Kanker District in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh united to demand that the last remaining three Christian families in the village renounce their faith or be expelled from the village.

The leaders including the village head, head constable, secretary and the president of the village council, sub-district revenue magistrate, sub-divisional magistrate, land record officer, additional superintendent of police, and officer in-charge of three police stations, confronted the Christian families, numbering 18 people who are inter-related, after they had been attacked by a mob of about 150 people in September.

One of the Christians, Vikas Salam (24) described how the mob, armed with wooden sticks , carried out the attack: “They spared nobody, hitting women, children, men and the elderly. I was hit the most.” Vikas spoke about how his 11-year-old nephew Rohan Nureti was beaten: “They brutally hit him on his legs with sticks, so much so that the poor boy was not even able to walk. They did not spare my wife nor my two aunts. Several of them pounced on one member of the family, assaulted each one with sticks, hands, legs mercilessly.”

Vikas escaped momentarily and called the police but they did not come until he called again and told the district police superintendent that the Christians would be killed if officers did not come. Following the second call, police immediately arrived on the scene.

Despite the visible injuries suffered by the Christians, Vikas said that police ignored their complaints after village leaders told police “they just slapped us two or three times and that’s all”. Four of the Christians including Vikas required hospital treatment while others went to local doctors.

Background

The three families converted to Christianity ten years ago and initially met with other Christian families in the village. However, Vikas said that opposition has intensified in the last three years, incited by local Hindu extremists; “The other Christian families in the village have all been forcibly converted to Hinduism but we have been holding on despite extreme pressure.”

The  Christians used to meet together in Vikas’ house but after facing much opposition, they built a room outside the village in their own farmland and began to gather there. However, their services there were disrupted on three consecutive Sundays in September by mobs of villagers.

The Christian families were summoned six times before the village head and the council in the course of eight days (between 13 and 20 September). “All six times, I explicitly told them that wherever we live, we will live with Jesus Christ,” Vikas said. “If we are not allowed to live in this village, we will spend our life somewhere else but will not renounce our faith in Christ.”

Speaking about his faith, Vikas said, “We will not deny Christ, because since the day we started to believe, our lives have changed. We lived a life where we drank alcohol, got into fights, and arguments. It was a pathetic life that we lived. Now we are out of it; we don’t live the same way we used to. Initially we started to follow Christ because we received physical healing, but when we read the Bible, we found out that the Lord gives us eternal life. So, we do not want to forsake Christ. We have decided to leave our land, our property, our home and our ancestral village. We will live in a far-off city, where we have freedom to attend church and worship Jesus, even if we must work as a daily wages’ labourer.”

Attacks against Christians have increased since Chhattisgarh’s revised anti-conversion law was passed in March 2026.

(Morning Star News)

Photo Credit: Area Resident via Morning Star News