Pastor arrested in Rampur for trying to convert Dalit community to Christianity

Rampur, Dec 27: Two persons, including a Church pastor, were arrested in separate cases in Rampur district on Sunday for allegedly trying to make people convert to Christianity, police said.

 

 

 

The first case was lodged at the Patwai police station in Shahabad sub-division against pastor Paulus Masih (35) for allegedly luring some people belonging to the Dalit community to adopt Christianity by promising a “good life” on the complaint of one Rajeev Yadav, who claimed to be a Bajrang Dal office-bearer. The FIR was registered against Masih under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act.

 

 

 

“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 the 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, in 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 from the 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 the 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.”

 

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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.