Hindu family forcibly converted to Christianity under pretext of curing illnesses in Chhattisgarh

Case ID : 8da1916 | Location : Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 16 November, 2001

Case ID : 8da1916

Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India

16 November, 2001

Hindu family forcibly converted to Christianity under pretext of curing illnesses in Chhattisgarh

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Case Summary

In Rajendra Nagar, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, a Hindu family was forcibly converted to Christianity under the pretext of curing diseases. According to media reports, in 2001, the victim Hindu family, led by Shankar Prajapati, consisting of twenty-two members, was forcibly converted to Christianity by local Christians. At that time, Shankar’s mother was severely ill, and the local Christians lured and influenced the Hindu family, assuring them that her illness would be cured if they accepted Christianity. Under this pressure, the entire family of twenty-two people converted to Christianity. Following this, Shankar’s mother recovered from her illness. However, the family later expressed a strong desire to return to their ancestral Hindu faith. With the assistance of Hindu organisations such as the Bajrang Dal, the family underwent a Ghar Wapsi (reconversion ceremony), a religious ritual where Hindus coerced into other faiths are brought back to Hinduism. This Ghar Wapsi event took place on 17th November 2025, and the family returned to Hinduism by performing a Satyanarayan Puja (a Hindu religious worship ritual) that honours Lord Vishnu, a revered Hindu deity. While speaking to the media, Shankar’s mother, who had been ill earlier, affirmed her faith, stating that even if she were to fall sick again, she would never abandon her Hindu religion.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the subcategory selected 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. The other subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. 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 represented a grave instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, rooted in the deliberate exploitation of vulnerability and coercion of a Hindu family. The persecution of the family arose from the illness of Shankar’s mother, whose fragile medical condition was mercilessly used by Christian perpetrators as an instrument for religious conversion. The perpetrators targeted the family during a period of emotional turmoil, deceitfully convincing them that the mother’s recovery depended upon abandoning their Hindu faith and embracing Christianity. By exploiting the family’s fear, faith, and desperation for the well-being of an elderly loved one, they coerced the entire household into renouncing their ancestral religion. This was not an act of compassion or benevolence but a calculated and systematic attempt to weaponise a vulnerable woman’s suffering to dismantle the family’s religious and cultural identity. The incident revealed a deliberate abuse of emotional and psychological dependence, carried out under the guise of miraculous healing, thereby violating the family’s religious autonomy and human dignity. Such inducements used to manipulate and convert Hindus to Christianity expose the underlying religious hostility driving the act, making this a clear and deliberate instance of a religiously motivated hate crime. The false assurance that conversion could cure disease also demonstrated a manipulative strategy that has long been used in predatory conversion practices by Christians. Such inducements, based on fabricated promises of miraculous healing, amounted to targeted psychological conditioning and brainwashing designed to weaken the victims’ faith and instil dependence on a new religious identity. Through deceit and emotional exploitation, the perpetrators in this case sought to destroy the foundational belief system of the family and impose a foreign faith upon them. The claim that embracing Christianity could restore health was deeply deceptive and served to conceal the underlying motive of religious domination. This approach, appealing to superstition rather than compassion, exemplified the perpetrators’ religious animosity and intent to dismantle the Hindu family’s relationship with their core Hindu values and identity. It also exposed how coercive conversion methods operate under the guise of benevolence, masking aggression and hate behind the superficial language of healing and salvation. The family’s subsequent decision to return to their original faith through Ghar Wapsi (reconversion ceremony) further demonstrated the depth of psychological and spiritual trauma inflicted upon them. Their participation in the Satyanarayan Puja ritual symbolised a reclamation of dignity, autonomy, and faith after being deprived of them through coercion. As victims of religious conversion carried out through deception and duress, the family experienced alienation and inner conflict stemming from the forced disassociation from their native Hindu religion. Such circumstances highlight the moral and emotional suffering that victims of forced religious conversions often endure, as their religious and spiritual identity is violated and replaced against their will. Given the nature of the act—where the conversion was achieved through deceit, coercion, and religious manipulation—it meets the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime under the framework of targeted hostility against a community’s faith identity. This case is, therefore, being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the date of an incident based on when the victims’ ordeal begins rather than when it is reported by the media. In this case, media sources have not specified the exact date on which the victims’ ordeal commenced, stating only that the family was lured and forcibly converted to Christianity in the year 2001. The only other date referenced in the available reports is 17th November 2025, when the victims reconverted to Hinduism through a Ghar Wapsi ceremony. Based on these details, 17th November 2001 has been used as the indicative and estimated date marking the beginning of the victims’ ordeal for documentation purposes. Media reports stated that 22 Hindu family members were targeted for conversion, but no gender-wise breakdown was provided. For documentation clarity, the Hinduphobia Tracker has applied a proportional demographic estimate based on India’s Census 2011 and NFHS-5 (2019–21) urban population data. Accordingly, the 22 participants are estimated as 12 men (55%) and 10 women (45%).