By Jose Kavi
New Delhi, Dec 20, 2023: Church groups in India on December 20 expressed joy after a court granted bail to a priest and three Catholics in judicial custody for nearly three months for allegedly violating an anti-conversion law.
The Allahabad High Court, the top court of Uttar Pradesh in northern India, granted bail to Father Babu Francis, the director of social work in Allahabad diocese and others on December 18.
“With God’s grace and your prayers Fr. Babu Francis has been granted bail. We received the bail order at 5:10 pm today. He will come out very soon along with others. Let’s thank God for His great gift for Christmas 2023,” said a message from Bishop Louis Mascarenhas of Allahabad addressed to his people.
The prelate urged the priests, nuns and Brothers in the diocese to offer a thanksgiving Mass on December 21.
While thanking his people for their “constant prayers and support during this difficult time,” the bishop pointed out that “their innocent suffering will not go in vain, it will strengthen the Church and faith to work for the Lord.”
The high court granted bail after a lower court in Prayagaraj district remanded the four into judicial custody on October 2, after they were arrested for violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.
A local leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party Vibhavnath Bharati, in his complaint to the Naini police station, had accused the priest and others of attempting to convert villagers into Christianity.
Bharati also accused them of defaming Hindu gods. He also alleged that the four had tried to throttle him when he objected to them. He was rescued by his supporters, he added.
The police then arrested the four on October 1 and produced them in the court the following day that sent them to jail, sending shock waves among Christians.
“In reality the police complaint is based on totally fake charges,” said a diocesan official who monitored the court case.
The Church official said the BJP leader had forced his way into a Sunday prayer service conducted by a Protestant Pastor and accused him of illegally converting Hindus to Christianity.
“When the BJP leader along with his supporters created a ruckus and informed the police the pastor ran away,” the official said.
The police later detained the pastor’s brother, who is a Catholic working the Allahabad diocese’s social work department.
As this news reached his two colleagues, they came to the police station to help the pastor’s brother. However, the police detained the two and questioned them.
They told the police that they worked in the diocesan social work department under Father Francis. Then also informed Father Francis about their detention and the priest came to the police station to inquire about their detention.
“The police arrested the priest as well from the police station and charged them of violating the state’s anti-conversion law and also attempting to strangle the complaint,” the Church official explained.
“None of them were there in the prayer service or seen the complainant but still the police arrested them and sent them to jail,” the official lamented.
The Church official said they have sufficient evidence to prove that the priest and others were not in the village at the time of alleged crime, but they were falsely implicated.
Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in the country, tops the list of states where Christians suffer persecution.
The United Christian Forum, a New Delhi-based ecumenical body that tracks persecution against Christians, has noted in its latest report that this year Uttar Pradesh accounted for 287 of 687 cases of persecution against Christians in India.
Christians are only a mere 0.18 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s more than 200 million people, who are mostly Hindus.
Jose Kavi,
Very good reporting indeed!
By the way, Fr Sebastian Francis (Babu) is an LLB (1998-2001) from Bangalore University and has specialisation in both Canon and Civil Law. He has been parish priest of St. Xavier’s Church, Ashoknagar (under Allahabad Diocese) since 2014. So knowledge of law really helps.
It’s a very good piece of news indeed and a great relief. Though it may not be termed a reprieve, it will serve as a precedent in future allegation/cases under anti-conversion laws.
1. Currently 11 out of 29 states 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).
2. Anti-conversion laws in all the above states mandate prior permission from respective state authorities for converting from one religion to another. The laws have fixed the onus on the accused to prove that they have not violated the provisions of the law. In the instant case Fr Babu Francis and his three Catholic associates had to prove that they had not violated the U.P. Anti-conversion Law.
3. Very strangely there is no such Central Government law. In 2015, the Union Law Ministry stated that Parliament lacks the legislative authority to enact legislation prohibiting conversion. Therefore, it’s not surprising that 21 petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court of India over anti-conversion law cases pending in Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Karnataka high courts. The Supreme Court sought responses from the governments of these states regarding these petitions which have challenged the validity of Religious Freedoms Act (Anti-conversion Laws).
4. India is a Secular country where no religion should be given official patronage and no religion should be allowed to intrude on public domain and take the centre stage. In a truly secular country (e.g. USA, UK) people of different religions and faiths have the freedom to practise and propagate their religion without any fear of discrimination. Mere change of one religion should not presuppose that it has been done by use of inducement, force, fraud or promise of a better quality of life. In the Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act “Allurement” also means education in a school run by any religious body, divine pleasure and better lifestyle.
5. It’s high time each diocese took up tutorial classes on our Fundamental Rights (and also our duties) as per the Constitutional. Making the laity aware of their rights will not make them spiritually weak and wean them away from the Church!
Feeling grateful to God! Also it’s a matter to unite and think what kind of behaviour nation wants us to do. Aren’t we allow to practice a religion of our own choice? Where is secularism?
This was a totally false and fabricated case. Thank God for their release just before Christmas.