Hindus villagers brainwashed and manipulated to convert to Christianity under pretext of religious prayer meeting; police denies conversion angle
Fatehabad, Haryana, India 
11 August, 2025
Case Summary
In Kulan village, Fatehabad, Haryana, Hindus were being indoctrinated and persuaded to convert to Christianity by members of Christian missionary groups. According to media reports, the Christian community had held a two-day prayer meeting, and a large number of Hindu villagers gathered at the venue. The Hindu villagers stated that efforts were being made to convert people under the guise of a religious programme. They also said that the Christian organisers were encouraging conversions by presenting the virtues of Christianity. This further led to an altercation between the Hindu villagers and the Christian perpetrators. On receiving the information of this incident, Tohana Sadar police station in-charge, Shadi Ram, and Kulan outpost in-charge, Dalveer Singh, reached the site with their teams. They tried to bring the situation under control. Station in-charge Shadi Ram stated that the programme concluded peacefully. Villagers Ankit Balotia and Jagdish Lahriyan stated that two or three days earlier, members of the Christian community had put up posters in the villages advertising the programme. The villagers had lodged a complaint regarding this. However, the police denied the conversion angle by stating: "No such talk of religious conversion has come to the fore. If any such activity comes to light, action will be taken as per the rules."
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Predatory Proselytisation. Within this, the 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 exemplified a hate crime because it targeted Hindus as a religious group and sought to undermine their beliefs and identity through subtle proselytisation framed as a religious prayer event. The conduct of the Christian perpetrators went beyond religious outreach; it employed manipulative techniques to promote the supposed goodness and supremacy of Christianity, striking at the dignity and equal standing of Hindus in their own village. The Christian missionaries attempted to erode confidence in Hindu beliefs within the Hindu community. Such actions are rooted in deep-seated religious animosity towards Hindus and the Hindu community. The Christian perpetrators used subtle brainwashing, asserting that Christianity was the best and presenting conversion as the desired outcome. This involved extolling Christianity in absolutist terms, which indirectly suggests to the Hindu villagers that adherence to Hinduism was insufficient or misguided, and using religious messaging to steer people towards abandoning their Hindu faith. Such tactics did not respect the religious autonomy of the Hindu victims; instead, they leveraged targeted messaging to create doubt, guilt, or social pressure in the minds of Hindus. This aligns with coercive and manipulative methods to strip Hindus of their faith and persuade them to adopt Christianity. The scale and setting further reinforced the religiously targeted nature of the conduct. The Christian perpetrators convened a large gathering of Hindu villagers and focused their efforts on a substantial Hindu audience with the intent to convert them to Christianity. This targeting of a significant number of Hindus showed that the incident was not random; rather, it was a deliberate attempt to single out Hindus for their religious identity. This made the religious motivation behind the crime evident and demonstrated a pattern of selectively targeting Hindus. The response by the authorities also compounded the harm. When the police downplayed or denied the communal motive and the element of religious conversion, it indirectly supported the Christian perpetrators by minimising the gravity of the conduct and failing to recognise its impact on the Hindu victims. Characterising the event as routine or peaceful, despite altercations and complaints raised by Hindus in advance, signalled institutional reluctance to engage with incidents in which Hindus were the victims of coercive and manipulative conversion attempts. The police, in many such cases, where the motive behind the crime is obvious but not explicitly mentioned, deny that the crime committed was in any way motivated by a religious bias or say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to the crime. Several factors are generally at play here. Many a time, the police downplay incidents of low-level communal crime because it is their jurisdiction that comes under question. The police also often say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to a crime when there was one because they wish to ensure that, owing to the crime already committed, there is no further flare-up in the area. However, only a police statement cannot be enough to determine whether there is a communal angle present in the crime that has been committed. In fact, to determine whether the crime is communal in nature or not, we need to give emphasis to the ground realities. For example, in the case of Rinku Sharma, the Bajrang Dal activist who was mercilessly stabbed in his house in front of his family members in Delhi’s Mangolpuri area in the year 2021, the leftist media and the leftist ecosystem had tried to peddle that there was no communal angle to the crime. Even the police denied that the crime was communal in nature. However, Opindia, a news portal, spoke to several people who were on the ground with the family of Rinku Sharma, and they were told that the communal tension in the area is palpable. The family of Rinku Sharma stated that the Muslims of the area held a grudge against Rinku ever since he celebrated the Ram Mandir verdict Like the case of Rinku Sharma, those cases where even if the police have denied a communal angle or the leftist media have gone on an overdrive to peddle the ‘no communal angle’ trope, the ground reality, like the victim’s family or relative's testimonies, make it clear that there was an obvious religious bias that led to the crime, will be documented in this tracker. Going by the same logic, in this case, even though the police denied the conversion angle, the fact that Hindu villagers stated that conversions of Hindus were taking place warranted treating this as a valid instance of a hate crime. Taken together, the messaging that Christianity was better and best, the directed nature of the event at a large group of Hindu villagers, and the subsequent minimisation by authorities established a pattern of conduct that intimidated and marginalised the Hindu community. It demonstrated hostility on religious grounds, reinforced power imbalances, and undermined the right of Hindus to practise their faith free from manipulation and coercion. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database.
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Christian Extremists
Perpetrators Range
Unknown
Perpetrators Gender
unknown
Sources 
