Hindu man pushed to death, family members say he was murdered for not converting to Christianity

Case ID : e97a34b | Location : Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Sat, 23 September, 2023

Case ID : e97a34b

Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

23 September, 2023

Hindu man pushed to death, family members say he was murdered for not converting to Christianity

Attack resulting in death

Attacked for refusal to convert

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A Hindu man named Mohanlal Pasi died during an altercation with officials from the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). The family of the deceased confirmed that Pasi was pressured to convert to Christianity and was harassed for refusing, which led to a confrontation, during which he was pushed, leading to injuries that resulted in his death. They alleged that the YMCA representatives and the police were trying to evict then from their residence because he had refused to change his faith. The YMCA representatives and the police, however, claimed that the altercation was over a property dispute. They claimed that the Hindu family had been living in a house built on the land of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) for the last several years. Therefore, the YMCA wanted the family to evict the house immediately. Family members said that when they were alone at home, an official associated with the Christian organization reached their house along with police and took all of them to court by force. After being informed about the situation, Mohanlal Pasi, head of the family, reached the spot. After some time, there was a dispute among all of them. Following the dispute, police and YMCA men pushed Mohanlal Pasi, due to which he suffered serious injuries and within a short time period he died.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under two prime categories. The first is- Attack resulting in death. The second prime category under which the case has been placed is- Predatory proselytisation. Within this, the sub-category 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. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. 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. In this case, the police called the incident a consequence of a property dispute and denied that the deceased was being harassed for conversion, but there is no denying that the family of the victim testified that Pasi faced persistent pressure to convert to Christianity, along with coercion and threats. 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. Likewise, the Left media and the leftist elite are also inclined to emphasise this "no communal angle" trope, especially wherever the victim of the crime is a Hindu. However, only a police statement or a media report, for instance, 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 spoke to several people who are on the ground with the family of Rinku Sharma and we were told that the communal tension in the area is palpable. The family of Rinku Sharma has said 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, since the family members of the deceased victim testified that the attack on the Hindu man was a consequence of his refusal to change his faith and was not accidental, this case has also been included in the hate tracker.