Only two chargesheets filed in 20 FIRs on 2021 Karnataka church attacks, ‘forced conversions’

There were allegations that they sang Bhajans in the church and abused church-goers – largely women – for following the Christian faith. A woman church-goer Gangavva Hullur and pastor Somu Avaradi had been attacked near the police station when they tried to lodge a complaint, Gangavva Hullur, the pastor’s sister, had stated.

Even as the Hubbali police, working under a right-wing BJP dispensation in Karnataka (a BJP MLA Arvind Bellad was part of the protest at the police station), were weighing their options on the Bajrang Dal demand for the arrest of the pastor, a Bajrang Dal leader and lawyer Ashok Anvekar, delivered a speech warning the police – particularly a young IPS officer K Ramarajan, the deputy commissioner for law and order in Hubbali – of dire consequences if he acts against the interest of the Hindus.

Deputy commissioner of police (law and order) Ramarajan filed a complaint under non-bailable sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) – including 153A for promoting enmity between religious groups, 295A for outraging religious feelings, and 353 for use of criminal force to deter a public servant from discharging his duty – against Ashok Anvekar and other Bajrang Dal activists.

The FIR was based on video recordings of the protest outside the police station by the Hindutva outfit. A few of the Christians, including pastor Somu Avaradi, were arrested following the Bajrang Dal protests and were held in prison for 11 days. On November 2, 2021, Bajrang Dal leader Ashok Anvekar obtained anticipatory bail from a Hubbali court and dodged arrest. On November 14, Ramarajan was transferred out of the region.

“The transfer may have been linked to the stand the officer took against the right-wing group but he had also completed a year of tenure in Hubbali and was up for a transfer in any case,” said a senior police officer who is aware of the BJP government’s handling of the affair.

“I was not there that day. They have filed a fake case against me. I had to obtain anticipatory bail because they filed a false case. The police do not like me because we keep filing cases against them and they have a personal grudge against me,” Bajrang Dal activist Ashok Anvekar claimed.

The police officer Ramarajan, who is now posted in a non-executive role in the state police department, refused to comment and said he had acted in the line of duty. The officer was transferred out on the day that he completed a year of his tenure in Hubbali.

Through the year 2021, as a case was being built by the BJP and right-wing Hindutva groups for the introduction of a law to ban conversions in Karnataka, dozens of attacks were carried out by right-wing groups on churches and prayer halls with the claim of forced conversions. In two instances where officials dared to stand up against this narrative, they were transferred out soon.

A December 2021 report titled `Criminalising the Practice of Faith’ by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on hate crimes against Christians documented 39 incidents spread across Karnataka – with the months of September and October seeing 16 cases as the push for the introduction of a law to ban religious conversions peaked.

Many of the incidents did not result in police cases – unlike the Hubbali incidents of October 17 – but there were occurrences documented by the United Christian Forum based on reports from the field. Some involved police refusal to register complaints by church groups.

According to the PUCL report, “the myth of conversion remains a bogey which is used to target the constitutional right to practice, profess and propagate religion as recognised under Article 25 of the Indian constitution. Allegations of conversion have been used to disrupt the right of Christians to practice and profess their religion,” the report states.

While the PUCL has reported 39 incidents of attacks and disruptions of activities in the guise of targeting forced conversions by Christians in 2021, the Karnataka Police has been able to authenticate only 28 instances of “disturbances at churches and prayer halls” of Christians in 2021, sources said.

“The Karnataka Police did not have to earlier categorise attacks on prayer halls of Christians among security concerns in the state but since the incidents of 2021 this is an area where information is being gathered in order to anticipate events,” said a police official familiar with the data for attacks on Christian places of worship in 2021.

The Indian Express looked closely at 20 incidents from 2021 involving either attacks on Christians or allegations of conversions by Christians that resulted in police registering formal cases.

Six incidents (including the Hubbali incident of October 2021) involved a complaint of an attack on a Christian place of worship by church-goers, and retaliatory complaints of forced conversions by right-wing Hindutva groups – resulting in 13 FIRs being registered (Hubbali case had three FIRs due to the hate speech).

The analysis shows the police played partisan roles to favour right-wing groups when both sides complained but were fair only when the Christians complained. Incidentally, chargesheets have been filed only in two of the 20 cases around alleged conversions or attacks on churches where FIRs were registered in 2021.

In an FIR registered on March 1 over an attack on church-goers for allegedly being too loud, the police in the Chittapur region of Kalaburagi district charged eight youths from the Itaga village for attacking a pastor Adevappa and his associates. “There was no issue of conversion, it was only about noise,” pastor Adevappa said.

In an FIR registered in Belagavi for an alleged attack on pastor Sanjay Bhandari and his family – on suspicion of being engaged in conversion activity – while they were visiting a relative, the police filed a chargesheet. “The chargesheet has been filed and there are some efforts to arrive at a compromise,” Bhandari said.

“In the cases of alleged conversions, which are mostly fake, the police tend to invoke non-bailable sections of the law but in the cases of attacks on Christians, lesser charges are brought by the police. This is done so that a compromise can be worked out to withdraw cases from both sides,” says Subhash Godagor, a pastor who was forced to leave the Harohalli area in Ramanagara district after a mob of 25-30 people attacked him, his wife and daughter on January 31, 2021, accusing them of converting Dalits in a village at a prayer hall.

After pastor Godagor filed a police complaint, a counter-complaint was filed against him by a former church-goe Ramesh Nayak, accusing the pastor of abusing him for not converting to Christianity. “They are now trying to work out a compromise to drop the cases. I have left the village and am working in the Haveri district,” pastor Subhash Godagor said.

“They were targeting Dalits for conversions. The Dalits are innocent but now many of those who converted are returning to be Hindus. The new anti-conversion law has created a scare among them,” says Ramesh Nayak, who is now locally identified as a BJP worker.

According to pastor Godagor, local Dalit leaders from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the Harohalli area have now intervened to facilitate the withdrawal of the case filed against him by Nayak as well as the case filed by him over the attack on the prayer hall.

“When the incident occurred no one stood with us, neither the police nor the local leaders. We were forced to leave Harohalli due to the threats we faced. We now feel the attack was intended to make it seem like there are large-scale conversions happening in the state,” pastor Godagor said.

“There were attacks on churches and prayer halls in 2008 and 2011 when BJP was in power earlier but there had been no reports of such incidents for nearly 10 years subsequently,” he said.

“We are scared now, all our people are scared. It is not a free atmosphere to practice my religion anymore. It is a very difficult period,” he added.

One another case of an attack on a Christian place of worship followed by a counter-complaint of conversion happened in Koppal district in north Karnataka on January 3, 2021, where a mob of around 20 people allegedly barged into a house in a tribal colony, where pastor Devendrappa Lamani and his family had been invited to conduct a prayer service.

“One of the persons who attacked us used to come to our church seven years ago. He called us for lunch at his house last January. When we were praying in the house, a mob that barged into the house, accused us of forcible conversions, and attacked my wife, young son, another pastor, and me,” said pastor Lamani, who belongs to the tribal Lamani community.

“We did not want to file a police complaint but we were forced to do so by the hospital where we were admitted for our bleeding wounds – since it was a medico-legal case. After we filed a complaint the attackers also filed a case,” Lamani said.

“Some of those who were associated with our prayers are with the RSS and that is why the attack occurred. They are planting people in prayer groups to make allegations of forced conversion. I was a Hindu once but I was not forced to convert. It was personal experiences including a life-threatening illness that affected my father that made me a Christian,” he said.

The campaign against conversions by the BJP, the RSS and its affiliates are part of efforts to keep scheduled castes and tribes enslaved in poverty, he claimed. “They do not want the lower castes to look them in the eye. They want them standing with folded hands forever,” pastor Lamani said.

Some of the right-wing activists who have filed police complaints of conversions, however, argue that right-wing groups are angered by the manner in which the church-goers tend to put down Hindu Gods. “Let them do what they want but they should not speak badly about other religions. They have converted for some reason – money or something else – but they should not speak badly about other religions,” said K S Murali, an RSS activist in the Pandavapura region of Mandya district who filed a police complaint on January 25, 2021, against a group of tribals for allegedly insulting Hindu Gods at village prayer meetings.

“There are different communities here. There are scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and Gowdas over here and each one gives prominence for his own caste. It is wrong to raise questions about a caste and religion to carry out conversions,” he said.

“They were migrant workers from Ballari who would come to work during the sugarcane harvesting season in our village. They used to hold prayers on Fridays and Sundays. One day, they made a speech about Hindu Gods and one of my friends heard about it. They disrupted the prayer meetings. We filed a police complaint against them. They went back to their village in Ballari,” the RSS worker said.

One of the seminal events in the build-up to the tabling of the Karnataka anti-conversion bill, titled the Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2021, in December by the BJP government was a statement made by the BJP MLA from Hosadurga, Goolihatti Shekhar, in the state assembly on September 21, 2021. (The bill was passed in the Legislative Assembly on December 23, 2021, but is yet to be cleared by the Legislative Council)

“There is large-scale conversion happening in the state. In Chitradurga, in my constituency, nearly 15,000 to 20,000 people have converted. Among those who have converted is my mother. She has converted to Christianity,” the BJP MLA told the legislature.

The two-term MLA and former minister Goolihatti Shekhar called for a law to curb conversions in the session and the state home minister Araga Jnanendra said the BJP government would introduce a law to ban forced conversions.

Several incidents took place in Hosadurga around the conversion issue before and after MLA Goolihatti raised it in the state assembly on September 21. A few months before Shekhar’s assembly speech, his mother Putamma had spoken publicly of her conversion after she was found attending a service at the Calvary Bethel Church in Hosadurga by local media.

A church in Hosadurga district of Karnataka.

She said she began going to church in 2013 during a time of personal crisis. A pastor at the Calvary Bethel Church in Hosadurga – where the MLA’s mother used to attend services – said the MLA’s mother came to the church due to problems in the lives of her youngest son.

“No God could save the lives of my younger son and daughter-in-law. The family does pujas but I am not doing it. I have stopped going to church also,” the MLA’s mother said soon after the news of her conversion was announced by the MLA in the legislative assembly.

In a series of events around the alleged forced conversion of the MLA’s mother, the Hosadurga police registered an FIR on November 14 against two pastors of the Calvary Bethel Church – Mohan T and Ramesh V, and their wives, under section 295 A (outraging religious feelings), section 341 (wrongful restraint), and 506 (criminal intimidation).

A former church-goer, Manjunath Dasbhovi, a neighbour of the two pastors in the single-room Ashraya homes built for the economically weaker sections of society on the outskirts of Hosadurga, had filed the police complaint accusing the pastors and their wives of forcing him to go to church on Sundays.

In his complaint Dasbhovi, a painter by profession, alleged that his neighbours, who were pastors at the Calvary Bethel Church, stopped him near the church – located around 400 meters from the Ashraya colony – on a Sunday morning and abused him for stopping his visits to the church. “They are forcing poor Hindus from scheduled castes and tribes families to convert,” Dasbhovi said in his complaint to the police.

A service at the Calvary Bethel church.

“Nothing that has been alleged in the police complaint is true. We are also Bhovis – a scheduled caste group. Based on false allegations the case has been filed under serious sections against two families,” said pastor Mohan. Three days after the case was filed, the pastors obtained anticipatory bail from a district court in Chitradurga.

“Manjunath is our neighbour and was a part of the church for many years. We do not know why he has done this but we think it is because the Hosadurga BJP MLA’s mother started coming to our church,” said Ranjit M, a resident of the Hosadurga Ashraya colony.

“I belong to a scheduled caste group. We go to church only to pray. We are scheduled caste and Hindus in all other ways. My family started going to church because it was a way for us to give up bad practices like drinking and violence, ” Ranjit said.

Following the allegations of mass forcible conversions in Hosadurga by the BJP MLA of the region, the Chitradurga district officials ordered an inquiry by the Hosadurga tahsildar to ascertain whether the allegations were true.

“The tahsildar gave a report saying no forcible conversions had occurred in Hosadurga and he was soon transferred out of the town,” said Ashraya colony resident Ranjit M.

“The tahsildar visited my home for his inquiry. He asked us if we were coerced and we said that we converted on our own. He was satisfied,” said Manjanna, a resident of Hosadurga, a church-goer for many years, whose brother is among the dozen pastors in the region.

In a report dated December 1, 2021, sent to the Chitradurga deputy commissioner, the former tahsildar of Hosadurga, Y Thippeswamy, stated that around 35 scheduled caste families in the Maruthinagar area of Hosadurga had converted and that a visit to five families revealed that there no coercion was involved in the conversion by the families.

“They have said that they converted of their own volition. Pastors come from other places and hold meetings and those who are interested attend,” the report said.

On Christmas day last year, some of the Christian residents of the Hosadurga Ashraya colony, whose church visits have come under question, paid a courtesy call on the Hosadurga MLA. “The Bible tells us to love everyone. We visited the MLA, garlanded him, and gave him a cake for Christmas,” a resident said.

“This is all about the vote bank of the MLA. The fear is that the Christian numbers are going up. He also told us this when we went to meet him. The numbers will not increase but some people seem to be guiding his thinking in that direction,” said an Ashraya colony resident.

The series of incidents has left the Christian community shaken and many are wary of talking about the cases.

“Things have settled down now, we do not want to speak about it,” said Anita George, a pastor at the main Calvary Bethel Church in Hosadurga, who has been running the church since the death of her husband Pastor George in 2021 due to Covid-19.

Following the October 17, 2021, attack by Bajrang Dal activists on the All People’s Church in Hubballi, Gangavva Hullur, the sister of the pastor at the church, called for security to be provided to all Christian places of worship. “We are Panchamsali Lingayats (a sub-sect of the dominant Lingayat community in Karnataka) and will remain Panchamasali Lingayats. We however worship Jesus. Do we not have the right to practice a religion of our choice in a democracy?,” Hullur said in a media statement.

According to the Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2021, forced conversions or conversions through inducements, including marriage, can attract a jail term of three to five years, and a fine of Rs 25,000, in the case of conversion of people from the general categories, and a jail term of three to 10 years, and a fine of Rs 50,000 for people converting minors, women and persons from scheduled caste and tribal communities.