The Income Tax (IT) department on Tuesday conducted raids at the residences of two Punjab-based pastors named Bajinder Singh from Jalandhar, who shot to fame after his “Yeshu Yeshu” song went viral, and Harpreet Deol from Kapurthala, on Tuesday. Deol oversees the Open Door Church in Khojewala village, while Bajinder Singh runs the ‘Church of Glory’ and ‘Wisdom’ in Jalandhar’s Tajpur village.
According to the reports, around 50 Income Tax officers from separate teams executed simultaneous searches in Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Amritsar, New Chandigarh, Mohali, Kurali, and other locations belonging to the Pastors and seized documents related to their properties, bank accounts, and other important projects.
The Income Tax officers revealed that the pastors have been operating churches under the guise of healing ministries, which are self-styled congregations that accept a significant amount of funding from foreign nations. These are either registered as autonomous religious entities or as societies led by a pastor.
The officers also have seized documents, computers, and registers which contain details about the online bookings recorded for attending the Christian congregations. Pastor Bajinder Singh comes from the Haryana Jat family. The Tajpur church claims to have lakhs of members and has roughly 15 branches, including eight in Punjab and seven outside Punjab – in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Dubai, Bihar, Mumbai, and Kolkata.
Pastor Harpreet Deol on the other hand was born into a Jatt Sikh household. There are various branches of the Open Door Church too. These ministries have been established on large campuses. Both are Pentecostal pastors who have been involved in ‘miraculous healing’, involving a large number of followers, primarily from the Dalit community and the poorer sections of society. They both have leveraged social media extensively to disseminate their prayers and expand their reach both within India and overseas.
Earlier, it was reported that Pastor Bajinder Singh was lodged in jail in a murder case and during his time in prison, he came in contact with a pastor and got inclined towards Christianity. He also was arrested in the year 2018 for allegedly raping a woman from Zirakpur in Punjab.
Further, a case was registered against Pastor Bajinder Singh for looting a family for Rs 80,000 claiming that he would miraculously heal their daughter Nandini who was suffering from cancer for several years then.
Pastor Bajinder Singh came into focus in the year 2021 when he used a minor boy for instigating people to convert their religion to Christianity. In August last year, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) wrote a letter to Mandip Singh Brar, Deputy Commissioner of Chandigarh, seeking action against Singh for using a minor boy for forceful religious conversion activity. The action by the Commission was initiated after a video featuring a child had gone viral on social media.
The NCPCR, in its letter, noted that such videos promoted superstition and used children for such purposes, thus violating the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015. Taking the matter seriously, NCPCR directed the Deputy Commissioner to inquire into the matter.
In November last year, he made it to headlines after former CM of Punjab Charanjit Singh Channi and actor Sonu Sood were scheduled to attend his meeting in Moga. Vishwa Hindu Parishad had called for a protest against him, after which former CM Channi had decided to stay away from the event.
Also, one of his events was scheduled to be held in Mumbai on May 12, 2022. The controversial pastor had asked the people to attend the meeting if they had any financial trouble, bad health or any other problem. He said that all their problems would go away on accepting Christianity. And the same was promoted by Bollywood actors like Jonny Lever, Rakhi Sawant, Sonia Singh who said that Pastor Bajinder Singh was a ‘beloved prophet of God’ and that his arrival was a blessing for Mumbai.
