Poor Hindu women and children lured to weekly prayer meetings with promises of healthcare and money in Jabalpur
Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India 
25 April, 2026
Case Summary
Poor Hindu women and children in Durganagar Basti, Gaurighat area of Jabalpur district, Madhya Pradesh were being systematically targeted by Christian missionaries who lured them to weekly prayer meetings held at a private home under the pretext of offering healthcare, education for their children, and money. The operation was exposed when Hindu organisations arrived at the location and raised an alarm. Police arrived, detained two women, and recovered a large quantity of Bibles and prayer registers from the premises. Every Sunday, a prayer meeting was held at a home in Durganagar Basti within the Gaurighat police station area. Poor Hindu women from the settlement were the primary targets. They were drawn to the meetings through deliberate promises of better healthcare, education for their children, and direct financial inducements. Once gathered, they were subjected to systematic attempts to convert them to Christianity through brainwashing and religious manipulation. Bajrang Dal workers confirmed that this pattern had been ongoing at the same location on a weekly basis. Vishwa Hindu Parishad [VHP, World Hindu Council] officials stated that the operation was being funded from abroad specifically to facilitate the conversion of Hindus to Christianity. Children and women were specifically identified as the targets of the conversion operation. The deliberate selection of women and children from an impoverished community reflected a calculated strategy of targeting those most susceptible to material inducement and least equipped to resist sustained religious manipulation. Hindu organisations received information about the gathering and arrived at the location, raising a significant alarm. Gaurighat police arrived at the scene in response and brought the situation under control. A search of the premises yielded a large quantity of Bibles and prayer registers. Two women connected to the operation were taken into custody for questioning. Circle Superintendent of Police [CSP] Ashish Jain confirmed that Hindu organisations had informed police that a woman was conducting conversion activities at her home by inviting people under false pretences. When police arrived, individuals were being given information about a specific religion and being enticed with promises of healthcare benefits, education, and money. Police registered a case under the Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam [Madhya Pradesh Religious Freedom Act]. Two women were detained and further action was underway.
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 targeting Hindus". Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case qualifies as a religiously motivated hate crime in which Christian missionaries in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh conducted a sustained and organised campaign of inducement-based conversion targeting poor Hindu women and children in Durganagar Basti through weekly prayer meetings held under false pretences. The operation was deliberate, structured, and specifically directed at the most economically vulnerable members of the Hindu community. The deliberate targeting of poor Hindu women and children through material inducement is the primary religious marker of this case. In the Hindu tradition, women are the primary custodians of religious practice within the household. It is Hindu women who perform the daily puja [devotional worship offered to Hindu deities through rituals involving flowers, incense, lamps, and prayers], who observe the fasts and festivals that structure the Hindu religious calendar, and who transmit Hindu religious knowledge, values, and identity to their children. The conversion of a Hindu woman does not merely change one individual's faith. It severs the transmission of Hindu religious identity within the household, removing the primary vehicle through which the next generation of Hindu children would otherwise have been raised within their faith. The missionaries understood this. They chose poor Hindu women as their primary targets deliberately, because the conversion of a Hindu mother is the most efficient mechanism available for the conversion of an entire Hindu household across generations. The use of a prayer meeting disguised as a community gathering is the second religious marker. The conversion operation was concealed behind the format of a weekly prayer meeting held at a private home every Sunday. A prayer meeting in the Christian tradition is a gathering for collective Christian worship, prayer, and religious instruction. Its use as the vehicle for conversion targeting was not incidental. It was a deliberate strategy of embedding the conversion process within a religious framework that the Hindu women attending had not consented to enter. Hindu women drawn to the gathering through promises of healthcare, education, and money were not told they were being invited to participate in Christian worship. They arrived expecting material assistance and found themselves in an environment of Christian religious instruction and prayer. The perpetrators chose this format deliberately because it allowed them to introduce Christian religious content to Hindu women gradually and under conditions of manufactured social obligation, making resistance progressively more difficult as attendance became habitual. The systematic and weekly nature of the operation, confirmed by the recovery of Bibles and prayer registers, is the third religious marker. The prayer meetings were held every Sunday at the same location, with Bibles and prayer registers recovered from the premises confirming the scale and organisation of the campaign. In the Hindu religious tradition, the Bible is not a sacred text. Its presence in large quantities at a location where Hindu women were being gathered under false pretences confirms that the purpose of the meetings was Christian religious instruction directed at people who had not sought it and had not been told it would be offered. The prayer registers confirm that attendance was being tracked and managed systematically, reflecting an institutional approach to conversion targeting rather than spontaneous religious outreach. The foreign funding of the campaign further confirms that this was an externally supported operation with the specific institutional objective of converting Hindu people to Christianity through sustained and structured inducement. It is important to mention here that such predatory actions stem from inherent hostility towards the victim's professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to the faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert. This mindset does not merely tolerate the existence of another faith but seeks its erasure or assimilation. As a result, Hindus are often targeted not because of who they are as individuals, but because of their religious identity. The violence, deception, or humiliation inflicted in such cases is therefore not random, but part of a broader ideological hostility toward Hinduism and its symbols, practices, and adherents. Here, too, the predatory actions stemmed from doctrinal animosity towards the Hindu faith, which is why this case is being documented as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. The source confirms the conversion operation had been running every Sunday for an extended period prior to its exposure, but no specific start date is confirmed. The publication date of 26 April 2026 has been used as the indicative incident date for documentation purposes. This was recorded for documentation purposes only.
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Christian Extremists
Perpetrators Range
From 2 To 5
Perpetrators Gender
female
Sources 
