Hindus lured with medical benefits and forcibly converted to Christianity in Chhattisgarh

Case ID : a04932a | Location : Kanker, Chhattisgarh, India | Date of Incident : Sun, 8 November, 2015

Case ID : a04932a

Kanker, Chhattisgarh, India

8 November, 2015

Hindus lured with medical benefits and forcibly converted to Christianity in Chhattisgarh

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Case Summary

In the Sarona village of Kanker district, Chhattisgarh, six members of a Hindu family were forcibly converted to Christianity by members of a Christian missionary group. This incident came to light when the six individuals who had previously converted to Christianity decided to return to their original faith, Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism). The village head welcomed them back by washing their feet in a traditional ceremony (Gharwapsi). The family members shared that they had earlier converted in the hope of finding better health, as the accused had promised them. However, over time, they experienced numerous social and familial challenges, leading them to return to their original community. One of the victims, Pardeshi Baghel, a resident of Ramnagar Para in Sarona village, along with five members of his family, had converted to Christianity ten years ago. On 9th November 2025, during a village council meeting held in Sarona, they expressed their wish to return to Hinduism. Former village committee chairman Ajay Hirwani, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Mandal president Yashwant Surojiya, Jeevan Netam, Sarpanch Deepika Vatti, village head Mohan Netam, former deputy sarpanch Pushkar Sahu, Ashok Nishad, Suresh Sahu, and other villagers welcomed them back into Hinduism. Pardeshi Baghel explained that his family had converted to Christianity after being offered medical inducements, but they never felt at ease in the new faith. For a long time, they had been considering returning to Hinduism, a religion they deeply believed in. They expressed great happiness upon reuniting with their community and visited a Shiva temple to offer prayers.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. 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 incident in Sarona village represented a textbook case of religiously motivated hate crime, where medical inducements were strategically used as a coercive tool to convert Hindus to Christianity. The Christian missionaries targeted a Hindu family by exploiting their health-related vulnerabilities. Under the guise of compassion and promised medical assistance, the perpetrators manipulated the victims into abandoning their ancestral faith. Such inducement was not an act of goodwill or humanitarian concern; it was a calculated act of coercion that preyed upon the family’s desperation for better health. By tying medical relief to religious conversion, the perpetrators transformed a fundamental human need into a weapon of religious dominance and psychological manipulation. This exploitation of illness to force conversion revealed a clear intent to weaken and fragment the Hindu identity of the victims through deceit and coercion. The Hindu victims, once converted, experienced deep distress, humiliation and alienation from their community. They felt stripped of their cultural roots and spiritual belonging. Over the years, they found no solace or healing in the new faith they were coerced into adopting. Instead, they lived with emotional discomfort and spiritual void, which ultimately compelled them to return to Hinduism. Their act of returning symbolised not only personal liberation but also resistance against an invasive form of Christian proselytisation. They described feeling deeply relieved and content upon reuniting with their faith, but also carried the pain of having been deceived into abandoning it in the first place. This case exemplified the harsh reality of predatory proselytisation, where coercion, manipulation and inducement are used to target and convert individuals from vulnerable Hindu communities. Such acts were rooted in religious animosity, aiming to erase the identity and heritage of the victims under the veil of compassion and charity. The forced nature of these conversions and the emotional and spiritual harm inflicted made it a clear instance of a hate crime directed against Hindus for their faith and cultural identity. These instances of targeted proselytisation activities stem from inherent hostility towards the victims' professed faith since Abrahamic faiths believe that any non-adherent to their faith is subject to being dehumanised till they convert, making it a religiously motivated crime against Hindus. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records the dates of incidents based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported by the media. In this particular case, the media reports did not specify the exact date when the forced conversion took place. They only mentioned that the Hindu victims were coerced into converting to Christianity ten years ago and that they returned to Hinduism on 9th November 2025. Based on these two details, an indicative date of 9th November 2015 has been assigned as the estimated date of the original incident for documentation purposes only.