Hindu employees pressured to convert to Christianity at Raipur school, dismissed from jobs for raising voices
Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India 
22 May, 2026
Case Summary
Hindu employees of Salem School, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, including a female sanitation worker and several other staff members, were subjected to sustained pressure to convert to Christianity by the school management and subsequently dismissed from their jobs after raising voices against the management. The dismissals triggered an organised protest response from the International Bajrang Dal, whose workers reached the Civil Lines police station, demanding an FIR against the school management. As per details, Salem School management had subjected Hindu employees, including a female sanitation worker, to sustained pressure to convert their religion. When the employees raised their voices against the management's conduct, they were dismissed from their positions. The female sanitation worker who had formally alleged conversion pressure was among those dismissed, establishing that the dismissals were a direct retaliatory response to the employees' decision to speak out. International Bajrang Dal workers reached Raipur's Civil Lines police station in protest and demanded that an FIR be registered against the school management. A significant scuffle broke out between police and Bajrang Dal workers during the protest. Workers filed a complaint against the school management and raised strong slogans against Salem School. They stated that, despite the Freedom of Religion Act being in force, some institutions were not following the rules and demanded an impartial investigation into the conversion-related allegations and strict action against those found guilty. The International Bajrang Dal warned that if the administration did not take appropriate action, the organisation would conduct a phased agitation. Reportedly, the school management has previously faced allegations of financial irregularities and corruption, which had already brought the matter to police attention before the conversion pressure allegations emerged.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
The primary category for this case is "Predatory Proselytisation". The sub-category for this case is "Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion". Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The conversion pressure at Salem School followed the same institutional methodology documented in the St. Aloysius School case in Jabalpur: a Christian educational institution used its power over the employment and livelihoods of Hindu workers as the primary instrument of conversion coercion. The school management did not give a free choice to its Hindu employees but applied sustained pressure to convert, and when employees raised their voices against this conduct, it sacked them. The dismissals were not a coincidental administrative decision. They were a direct and calculated retaliation against Hindu employees who had refused to comply with conversion demands and had chosen to speak out about the institutional conduct directed at them. The retaliatory dismissal of the female sanitation worker and her colleagues after they made allegations against the management establishes a second dimension of the institutional coercion beyond the conversion pressure itself. The school management not only used employment as a lever to demand conversion but then used the same employment lever to punish those who resisted and spoke out. This two-phase methodology, first coercion and then retaliation, reflects an institutional culture in which the suppression of Hindu religious identity and the silencing of Hindu resistance to conversion were both treated as legitimate exercises of managerial authority. The pattern dimension of this case is significant. The Salem School case in Raipur follows the same documented institutional methodology as the St. Aloysius School case in Jabalpur, in which Hindu sanitation workers were pressured to convert to Christianity and dismissed upon refusal. Two Christian schools in Chhattisgarh operating the same conversion methodology against economically vulnerable Hindu sanitation workers within the same period reflect an organised and coordinated approach to predatory proselytisation within Christian educational institutions in the state rather than isolated individual conduct. Hindu Dharma Sena state president Neeraj Rajput had already noted in the Jabalpur case that the pattern of conversion-linked dismissals extended across multiple schools in the city. The Salem School case in Raipur confirms that this pattern extends beyond Jabalpur to the state capital itself. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, the school management's conduct reflected more than an employment dispute or institutional misconduct. By subjecting Hindu employees to sustained conversion pressure, dismissing those who refused, and retaliating against those who spoke out, the management demonstrated a deliberate and institutional campaign to exploit the economic vulnerability of Hindu workers as a lever for religious conversion and to use the threat of livelihood destruction as the mechanism for suppressing Hindu resistance to that conversion. The Hindu employees of Salem School were targeted specifically because they were Hindu, and their employment was weaponised against their faith because economic dependence was assessed as the most effective instrument of coercion available against workers in their specific condition. This reflects an underlying hostility toward Hindu religious identity that cannot be characterised as anything other than religiously motivated. 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 exact date on which the conversion pressure began at Salem School was not confirmed in the source. The tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. In this case, therefore, 23 May 2026 has been used as the indicative incident date, reflecting the publication date as the earliest available reference point since the exact commencement of the conduct was not confirmed in the source. This date has been recorded for documentation purposes only.
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Christian Extremists
Perpetrators Range
Unknown
Perpetrators Gender
unknown
Sources 
