Tamil Nadu police have registered a case against three people for ‘forcefully’ applying the Hindu religious symbol (Pattai) on the foreheads of six Christians who were trying to indulge in forcible conversion by distributing religious pamphlets to residents of Perumselvavilai in Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, reported The Times of India.
The accused who were identified as Srinivasan, Rajesh and Suresh and others, have been booked under sections 294(b) (using abusive language), 323 (punishment for rioting), 95(a) (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting religion or religious beliefs), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint) and 506(ii) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. However, no arrests had been made until Monday.
The incident occurred when it was learnt that few people of the Church, including the pastor, Selvakumar, were distributing religious pamphlets to the residents. Few locals who accused the church personnel of indulging in forcible conversion got into an argument with them and to mark their disapproval, forcibly applied the Hindu religious symbol on the foreheads of these Christians.
Videos of the accused applying the symbols on these six Christians and threatening them to harm those who dared to clean the Pattai were recorded by their accomplices and widely circulated on social media. After all this, the Pastor lodged a complaint with the Vellichanthai police who subsequently registered a case against the trio.
The conversions of Hindus, who are being either lured or forced into adopting Christianity or maybe, it was prevalent but has started grabbing prominence, since more media houses have now started reporting of the same.
In November, last year it was reported how rampant cases of conversion had surfaced in several districts of Uttar Pradesh. Within 3-4 days Chhattispur, Nevada and Bijawal villages of Khanpur area of Ghazipur district have witnessed a conversion of about 30 Hindu families. After the Azamgarh, Jaunpur and Mau district in Purvanchal, the cases of religious conversions in Ghazipur district were constantly going up. Hindus in the region were reportedly being lured by Christian proselytisers for religious conversion.
Last year, a similar case of organised conversion was exposed when Christian preachers were deceptively converting the underprivileged children belonging to weaker sections of the society in Madhya Pradesh by providing them with inducements.
Similarly, in yet another shocking incident it was reported in August 2018, how Jharkhand police had swooped down on 88 Christian missionary-operated non-governmental organizations (NGOs), on grievous charges of misusing foreign funds for forceful religious conversion of tribals and political subversion.
In fact, in an interview with The News Minute on November 8, last year, the National Commission for Women (NCW) acting Chairperson, Rekha Sharma had asserted that forced conversions in the state of Kerala were a reality and that the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had kept his eyes shut to this gruesome reality. Sharma, in her interview, had also claimed that foreign funds are being used to convert girls to a particular faith and asserted that it is an issue that needs to be probed.
Earlier, the NIA too had flagged the brainwashing and conversion of Hindu women in the state by radical Islamist outfits such as the Popular Front of India (PFI). This outfit is allegedly involved in hypnotic counselling of Hindu girls in order to convert them into their religious centres as per NIA investigations.
