By Matters India Reporter
Jhabua, Feb 24, 2023: A Protestant bishop was remanded in judicial custody in connection with an alleged case of religious conversion in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
The family members of Auxiliary Bishop Paul Muniya of the Shalom Church in Jhabua district have denied the allegation and asserted that the prelate was charged with a fake conversion case.
A local court remanded Bishop Muniya in judicial custody on February 23 after he surrendered to the police more than a month after the case was registered against him.
He surrendered in compliance with an order from the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the top court in the state.
One Kailash Bhuria, a local resident, on January 11 filed a police complaint alleging that Bishop Muniya and Tita Bhuria, an elderly church member, in September 2022 invited him to a church and sprinkled some water on him and gave him a copy of the Bible and a cross.
When he refused to attend church services subsequently they threatened him. He also sought police protection and action against the bishop and the community member.
Kaleb Muniya, the prelate’s son, said his father was accused of violating the provisions of the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.
The police arrested and sent Tita Bhuria to jail soon after the complaint was filed on January 11.
However, Bishop Muniya was not arrested as he was not present at the place where the alleged offence took place.
The prelate approached the local court for anticipatory bail but it was rejected. Subsequently, he went to the High Court, which on February 20 directed him to surrender before the police and that he would be granted bail on the same day.
However, the lower court sent to him to jail citing certain technical problems, said.
“We are hopeful that he will get bail in a couple of days after the police complete the certain legal formalities,” the prelate’s son told Matters India February 24.
The son dismissed the complaint as “totally fake” as his father had neither visited the village nor met the complainant in his life.
“It is part of a planned campaign against us (Christians) and to defame us,” he said adding, “We are not scared about such persecution as we believe such things happen with the will of God.”
Right wing Hindu groups have stepped up campaigns against Christians in Jhabua, a predominantly tribal district where Christians make up 4 percent of its 1 million people.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal accuse the Christian missionaries of illegally converting tribals into Christianity. The Hindu groups now conduct campaigns for the reconversion of tribal Christians.
Christian leaders such as Father Rockey Shah, the public relation officer of the Jhabua Catholic diocese, denied the allegation saying, “We don’t convert anyone as being made out.”
The priest told Matters India that the rightwing groups raise the boggy of conversion to tarnish the Church’s image.
Christian make up 0.29 percent of more than 73 million people in Madhya Pradesh.
At present, 11 states out of 29 have enacted anti-conversion laws to curb change of religion (from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam) by individuals or groups through inducement, force, coercion or any other fraudulent means. These states are:
(1) Odisha (1967), (2) Madhya Pradesh (1968), (3) Arunachal Pradesh (1978), (4) Chhattisgarh (2000 and 2006), (5) Gujarat (2003), (6) Himachal Pradesh (2006 and 2019), (7) Jharkhand (2017), (8) Uttarakhand (2018), (9) Uttar Pradesh (2020), (10) Karnataka (2022) and (11) Haryana (2022).
From the timeline above, it is evident that contrary to popular belief, six out of the eleven states passed Anti-conversion Laws during the Congress regime. Though Arunachal Pradesh passed the Freedom of Religion Act in 1978, it was never enforced. (Source: Northeast Now, 24 February 2021).
The basic premises of these laws are that conversion is done through inducement, force or fraud. Therefore, the accused has to prove that he/she has not violated the legal provisions. In this case, Bishop Paul Muniya has to prove that he was not involved in the alleged conversion.
According to these laws “Inducement or allurement” means the offer of any gift or gratification, either in cash or in kind and shall also include the grant of any benefit, either monetary or otherwise. In Haryana Act “Allurement” also means education in a school run by any religious body, divine pleasure and better lifestyle. There is a problem with this legal definition. For example: “In a church-run hospital, if a patient is provided free treatment, anti-conversion law can be misused to say that it was an allurement or gift from the church authorities with the hidden agenda of religious conversion.”
The Bishop has to get very good lawyers to bail him out. Unfortunately, we have very few high-calibre Christian legal brains. The Indian Church needs to invest in diocese in producing such lawyers all across the country.