Hindus targeted and pressured for religious conversion by Christians in Durg, Chhattisgarh

Case ID : a0495b5 | Location : Durg, Chhattisgarh, India | Date of Incident : Mon, 22 November, 2021

Case ID : a0495b5

Durg, Chhattisgarh, India

22 November, 2021

Hindus targeted and pressured for religious conversion by Christians in Durg, Chhattisgarh

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Case Summary

In the Surya Nagar area of Durg district in Chhattisgarh, Hindus were targeted for Christian conversion by a Christian man named Manoj Kumar Sahu and his wife, Pastor Malti Sahu, along with their Christian accomplice Ravishankar Chandel. The accused organised Christian gatherings and pressured local Hindus to convert to Christianity. According to media reports, on 23rd November 2025, a Christian prayer meeting was held by the accused with the intent to convert Hindus to Christianity. Following this, members of the Bajrang Dal and the Hindu community, particularly the Sahu community, gathered outside the accused’s home and began shouting slogans. Upon receiving information about the commotion, City Superintendent of Police (CSP) Bhilai Nagar, Satyaprakash Tiwari, arrived with a police team and deployed a heavy police presence. The police calmed the situation by persuading both parties to disperse. This incident occurred in the jurisdiction of Nevai Police Station. The Hindu community and Bajrang Dal organised a protest after learning about the religious conversions. According to Hindu organisations and local Hindus, 30 to 40 people were targeted for forced Christian conversions at Manoj Kumar Sahu’s home in Surya Nagar. A board with Manoj Sahu’s name was displayed outside the house. The Hindu activists stated that Manoj Sahu and his wife were formerly Hindus who had even built a temple in front of their house before converting to Christianity a few years ago. However, after their conversion, they began pressuring their Hindu neighbours to convert as well. Jyoti Sharma, district coordinator of the Bajrang Dal, stated emphatically that Malti Sahu had been actively involved in religious conversions for many years. Before converting to Christianity, she and her husband had built a temple near their house. Since converting, Malti Sahu has aggressively encouraged Christian conversions within the neighbourhood, using intimidation to silence and pressure those who oppose her actions. Dr Kamta Sahu, a Sahu Hindu community official, said that over the past four years, the accused has been converting Hindus by conducting church services at home. People from Balod, Raipur, and other districts were also targeted for conversion. According to him, after praying at these gatherings, these individuals did not observe Hindu rituals such as lighting lamps in the evening. He also said that these conversion activities were backed by foreign funding. The Christian community denied any forced conversions, claiming that people voluntarily choose to convert and that an application had been submitted to the district collector. They emphasised that under the law, every person has the right to choose their religion. Upon reports of the disturbance, police increased security, deploying a substantial number of female officers. Statements were recorded from all present at the prayer meeting. The police interviewed both parties and prepared to take further action. Given the sensitive nature of the situation, police counselled both sides before dispersing the groups. CSP Satyaprakash Tiwari confirmed that all involved were being heard, and further action would follow after the investigation.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected 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 other subcategory selected is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category selected 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 is a clear instance of an anti-Hindu hate crime, where Christian perpetrators pressured Hindu victims, including local Hindu neighbours, to convert to Christianity. The use of coercion and pressure to force individuals to abandon their faith constitutes a deliberate and hostile undermining of the victims’ religious identity. Such acts are not mere religious expressions but represent a targeted campaign to destroy the Hindu identity of the victims, replacing it with Christianity through intimidation and coercion. The accused female pastor actively intimidated local Hindus who opposed these conversion activities, making it evident that resistance was met with threats, further heightening the atmosphere of religious hostility and coercion. This pattern of behaviour demonstrates deep-seated religious animosity aimed specifically at eroding and replacing the religious and cultural fabric of the Hindu community. The Hindu victims were targeted over an extended period, with the accused organising prayer meetings and church gatherings at their home to pressure people into conversion. The sustained nature of this campaign, spanning four years, points to a well-calculated, premeditated attempt to forcibly convert Hindus. The pressure tactics, intimidation, and manipulation employed highlight this as a clearly religiously motivated crime designed systematically to strip Hindus of their faith and community identity. Local Hindu organisations stated that foreign funding supported these conversion activities, further underscoring the organised and deliberate nature of the campaign. This external backing elevates the offence beyond individual acts to a larger, well-funded effort to alter the religious landscape of the area. The involvement of foreign funding makes the crime’s premeditated and orchestrated character even clearer, affirming it as a targeted anti-Hindu hate crime. The reports also stated that Hindu victims who attended the prayer meetings subsequently stopped observing traditional Hindu rituals, such as lighting lamps in the evening. This illustrates a systematic stripping away of the victims’ Hindu identity, eroding their connection to their religious and cultural customs brick by brick. By slowly replacing these practices with Christian beliefs and rituals, the perpetrators engaged in a deliberate process of religious manipulation and indoctrination. This calculated and gradual conversion effort clearly amounts to a religiously motivated crime, aiming to destroy the victims’ original faith and community ties, further reinforcing the religious hostility underlying the entire case. Christianity, as a faith, places significant emphasis on conversion, often viewing it as a core tenet of religious duty. However, when conversions involve manipulation, pressure, or coercion, as in this case, they transcend voluntary faith changes to become forced conversions. Forced conversions violate the victims’ fundamental rights to freedom of religion and conscience, constituting a hate crime driven by religious animosity. Such acts of coercion are a clear assault on the Hindu community’s religious identity, making it a religiously motivated offence. 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 date of an incident based on when the crime occurs or when the victims' ordeal begins. However, in this case, media reports have not specified the exact date when the religious conversion activities began. It is documented that the accused have been converting people to Christianity for almost four years, with the most recent conversion event occurring on 23rd November 2025. Based on this two information, for the purpose of consistent documentation, 23rd November 2021 has been selected as the indicative date of the incident.