Hindu individuals targeted with false miracle cure claims by Christian missionary group at Maharashtra Prayer Festival 2026
Sangli, Maharashtra, India 
13 March, 2026
Case Summary
Vulnerable Hindu individuals in Kavalapur near Miraj, Sangli district, Maharashtra, were targeted through false claims of miraculous healing of serious and incurable illnesses by a Christian missionary group named Jesus Calls. From March 13 to 15, 2026, the missionary organised the Maharashtra Prayer Festival 2026, promoting unverified miracle-cure claims as a means of drawing vulnerable individuals toward religious conversion through inducement. The Sangli Rural Police cancelled the event permission, citing violations of conditions, and registered a First Information Report against multiple individuals under the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013. The Bombay High Court subsequently intervened and set aside the cancellation order, subject to conditions, directing the organisers to comply with the anti-superstition law and appointing a vigilance officer to monitor the remaining sessions. The Maharashtra Prayer Festival 2026 was organised by the Christian missionary group Jesus Calls at Kavalapur near Miraj, with listed speakers including Paul Dhinakaran, Samuel Dhinakaran and their associates. The organisers promoted claims that serious and incurable illnesses could be cured through prayer, presenting these claims in a manner designed to mislead attendees into believing that medical conditions could be treated without professional healthcare. Individuals were invited to share testimonies on stage as part of the event's strategy to promote false miracle-cure claims to vulnerable attendees. One participant claimed recovery from stage-four cancer after prayer, while another individual, identified as Suji, stated that a blood-related illness had been cured and that she achieved significant academic success following prayer intervention. These claims were presented deliberately and publicly to a large audience of vulnerable individuals, exploiting their medical desperation and faith to draw them toward the Christian missionary group's religious framework through the false promise of miraculous healing. The event drew strong objections from local Hindu organisations including Sakal Hindu Samaj, which raised formal opposition stating that the programme was aimed at religious conversion through inducement and unverified miracle claims. Following both the reported violations of event conditions and the public opposition from Hindu organisations, Sangli Rural Police cancelled the event permission. Police Inspector B.A. Talekar confirmed the cancellation in an official communication. A First Information Report was registered against Dr. Dilip Bhore, Dr. Raosaheb Waghmare, Suji, and the event speakers under the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013, which criminalises exploitative practices and false claims of supernatural cures. The Bombay High Court subsequently intervened after a petition challenged the police action. A bench comprising Justices Madhav Jamdar and Pravin Patil held that the late night cancellation of the event was procedurally improper and lacked sufficient evidence of law and order concerns or inflammatory content, setting aside the cancellation order subject to conditions. The organisers were directed to comply strictly with the provisions of the anti-superstition law and submit a formal undertaking, with the State instructed to appoint a vigilance officer to monitor the remaining sessions of the event.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is "Predatory Proselytisation". The sub-category for this case is "Conversion/attempts to convert by inducement". Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. Another sub-category for this case is "Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination". The tertiary category here is "Pattern of targetting Hindus". This case qualified as a religiously motivated hate crime on the basis that the Christian missionary organisation Jesus Calls deliberately organised a large-scale event in Kavalapur near Miraj, Sangli district, Maharashtra, promoting false claims of miraculous healing of serious and incurable illnesses to a predominantly Hindu audience of vulnerable individuals, exploiting their medical desperation and faith as instruments of religious conversion through inducement. The deliberate and organised nature of the conversion operation, involving prominent Christian missionary speakers, staged public testimonies of miraculous healing, and a large-scale event infrastructure designed to reach the maximum number of vulnerable Hindu individuals, reflected a calculated and premeditated predatory proselytisation operation directed specifically at the Hindu community of Sangli district. The Jesus Calls organisation's deliberate promotion of false claims that serious and incurable illnesses could be cured through prayer constituted a direct and targeted act of conversion by inducement directed at vulnerable Hindu individuals suffering from serious medical conditions. Serious illness is one of the most profound sources of human vulnerability, creating in sufferers a state of desperation, fear, and openness to any promise of relief that makes them uniquely susceptible to exploitation through false claims of miraculous healing. By deliberately promoting claims of stage-four cancer recovery and blood illness cures through prayer to a large audience of vulnerable individuals, the Jesus Calls organisation exploited the medical desperation of Hindu individuals at their most vulnerable and defenceless, using the false promise of divine healing as a direct inducement to draw them toward the Christian missionary group's religious framework. The deliberate staging of public testimonies of miraculous healing on stage, with individuals invited to share their claimed recoveries before a large audience, reflected a calculated strategy of amplifying the psychological impact of the false inducement claims to maximise their effect on vulnerable Hindu attendees. The systematic promotion of false miracle cure claims at a large organised event reflected a deliberate and sustained strategy of psychological manipulation and subtle indoctrination designed to create a state of faith-based dependency on the Jesus Calls organisation among vulnerable Hindu attendees. The staging of public testimonies, the prominent billing of well-known Christian missionary speakers including Paul Dhinakaran and Samuel Dhinakaran, and the large-scale event infrastructure all combined to create an environment of manufactured religious authority and false spiritual credibility designed to make the claims of miraculous healing appear credible and compelling to vulnerable Hindu individuals. The deliberate creation of this environment of false spiritual authority and manufactured miracle claims reflected a calculated and sustained strategy of subtle indoctrination designed to progressively draw vulnerable Hindu individuals away from their Hindu faith and toward the Christian missionary group's religious framework through the systematic exploitation of their medical vulnerability and faith-based trust. The deliberate organisation of a large-scale Christian missionary event in a Hindu majority area of Maharashtra, targeting a predominantly Hindu audience of vulnerable individuals with false miracle cure claims, reflected a conscious and organised pattern of predatory targeting of vulnerable Hindu individuals through faith-based inducement. This pattern was not unique to the Jesus Calls organisation but reflected a broader and documented pattern of Christian missionary organisations using identical methods of false miracle claims and staged healing testimonies to target vulnerable Hindu individuals for conversion across multiple states in India. The earlier case of Pastor Ankur Narula in Jalandhar, Punjab, in which identical methods of fake miracles and fraudulent anointing oil were used to target poor and vulnerable Hindu individuals for conversion, confirmed the organised and systematic nature of this pattern of predatory proselytisation directed specifically at vulnerable Hindu individuals across India. The recognition of this pattern by local Hindu organisations including Sakal Hindu Samaj, which raised formal opposition to the event citing its conversion through inducement agenda, reflected the broader Hindu community's awareness of the organised and deliberate nature of the predatory targeting of vulnerable Hindus through faith-based miracle claims. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, it was added to the hate crime database of the tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a crime occurred, or a victim's ordeal began, rather than when the media reported it. In this case, the Maharashtra Prayer Festival 2026 was scheduled to run from March 13 to March 15, 2026. Therefore, March 14, 2026 has been chosen as the indicative incident date as it represents the middle day of the three-day event, reflecting the period during which the false miracle cure claims were actively being promoted to vulnerable Hindu attendees. The exact date on which specific vulnerable Hindu individuals were subjected to the conversion by inducement operation cannot be confirmed from the available sources, as the predatory proselytisation was carried out across all three days of the event. This was recorded for documentation purposes only.
Case Status
Complaint registered
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Christian Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
