In UP’s Rampur, pastor among 2 held on conversion charges

“Except for the pastor, we have not found involvement of any other person in the matter so far. We will also take into account the videos of the incident doing rounds on social media,” said Patwai station house officer (SHO) Harendra Yadav.

Rampur ASP Sansar Singh too confirmed the arrest of Paulus Masih, a resident of Civil Lines area in Rampur.

In his complaint, Rajeev Yadav said they got information on Sunday afternoon that several people assembled at the residence of Vikram Singh, also a Dalit, at Sona village. “We came to know that a pastor was convincing people to adopt Christianity by way of promises. We went to the spot and found that he was trying to convince people to change their religion to Christianity . Though he denied having lured people to adopt Christianity, many of those present there claimed otherwise,” said Rajeev. Later, police reached the spot and brought the pastor to the police station for questioning.

SHO Yadav said that during the preliminary probe it came to light that there were around 20-30 persons of Jatav community at Vikram Singh’s house when the pastor was present there.

Also, a 26 year-old youth was arrested for allegedly trying to convince people belonging to the Dalit community to adopt Christianity by luring them with the promise of a “good life”.

The accused, Shivdesh, a Dalit, is a resident of Bakar Ali village in Milak sub-division. Milak police station in-charge Rajesh Kumar said, “We got information that Shivdesh convinced some people of his village to accompany him to Delhi where he would get his conversion done. He had also hired a bus. Acting on information, we nabbed Shivdesh and found the allegations to be true.”

Shivdesh was booked under the anti-conversion law and was produced in court which sent him to judicial custody.

The complaint against him was lodged by Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) district president Sanjeev Gupta, Kumar said.