Chhattisgarh Christian family to leave village after attack

KANKER, Chhattisgarh – A Chhattisgarh Christian family says it will abandon its ancestral village rather than give up its faith, five weeks after a crowd of about 150 people beat members of three Christian households with sticks, according to a report by Morning Star News published by Christian Daily.

The attack took place on Sept. 21 in Bhandardigi village, in the Durgukondal block of Kanker district. Vikas Salam, 24, told Morning Star News that the attackers hit men, women, children and elderly people, and that police did not answer his first call for help. Four people, among them an 11-year-old boy, needed hospital treatment.

“We have been following Jesus for the last 10 years,” Salam said. He said villagers gave the families two choices: return to Hinduism or leave.

Last Christians in the village

The three families, 18 people in all, are related and are the last Christians left in Bhandardigi, Salam said. He said hostility had built up over several years and sharpened in the past three, which he blamed on local Hindu hardliners. Other Christian households in the village had already been made to reconvert, he said.

The group first prayed in Salam’s home. After objections, he said, they built a small room on their own farmland outside the village and met there instead, but villagers followed them to that site too.

According to Salam, villagers broke up the Sunday service three weeks running from Sept. 6. Between Sept. 13 and Sept. 20, the families were called six times before the village head and council, he said. Each time, he said, he told them the family would keep its faith wherever it had to live. Also Read FRGN directive: CNCCI asks Nagaland government to act

Salam said the Christians were verbally abused and threatened with beatings, social boycott and expulsion. He also said they were barred from collecting the monthly subsidised government ration of rice, wheat and cooking oil, which his family relies on. On Sept. 20, he said, a crowd again disrupted their worship and told them to renounce their faith.

‘They spared nobody’

The next day, Salam said, about 150 people carrying wooden sticks entered the area where the families lived and attacked without warning. “They spared nobody,” he said, adding that he took the worst of the beating and that many of the attackers were drunk.

Salam said he was choked, slapped and kicked, hurt in the ear and struck on the back until a stick broke. His uncle, Somji Nureti, 40, was seized by the throat and injured in the ear, throat and back, he said. His cousin, Pradeep Uike, 25, suffered serious back injuries.

Somji Nureti’s son Rohan, 11, was beaten on the legs so badly that he could not walk, Salam said. He said women in the family, including his wife, were also beaten.

Police response questioned

Salam said he broke away from the crowd long enough to call the local police station, less than two miles (about 3 km) away, before he was dragged back. No officers came, he said. He escaped a second time and phoned the Kanker superintendent of police, warning that the Christians would be killed. Police then arrived quickly, he said.

He said police did not act against the attackers because the crowd had stopped the families from filming the assault on their phones, even though their injuries were visible. When he tried to describe the attack to an officer, he said, village elders cut in and said the Christians had only been slapped “two or three times.”

Police took Salam, Somji Nureti, Pradeep Uike and Rohan Nureti to hospital, where they were given painkillers and sent home, Salam said. Others went to local village doctors. Five weeks on, he said, several still have body pain, hearing problems and sore throats.

Officials urged families to recant, Salam says

When they came back from hospital, Salam said, the families found their belongings on the road and were told to leave. He said villagers had talked of beating them to death.

Salam said a large group then met the families in the village. He named the village head and council office-bearers, a head constable, revenue and land-record officials, the sub-divisional magistrate, an additional superintendent of police and the officers in charge of three police stations. He said they urged the families to give in to the village’s demands. Salam said the families were warned they could lose their farmland and were asked to choose between their land and Jesus.

Nagaland.News has not independently verified the account. The Morning Star News report did not include a response from Kanker police, the district administration or village leaders. This report will be updated if the authorities respond.

Father agrees to convert

Salam’s father, Ram Salam, 50, and representatives of the other two households later agreed, on behalf of their families, to convert to Hinduism, the son said. Ram Salam told him they had to protect themselves and their land, and the three families also made a religious offering that villagers demanded, Vikas Salam said.

Vikas Salam and his own household have refused. He said villagers keep calling them to join rituals for local deities, and that the family lives under constant threat of another attack until it can leave.

Salam said the family first turned to Christianity after experiencing physical healing, and that faith had ended a life of drinking and fighting. He said they would move to a distant city where they can attend church freely, even if it means working as daily-wage labourers. “We have decided to leave our land, our property, our home and our ancestral village,” he said.

Background

Tribal communities in Chhattisgarh follow their own traditional religions, but Christian leaders say decades of campaigning by Hindu nationalist groups have blurred the line between tribal belief and Hinduism. Those groups call the reconversion of tribal Christians “ghar wapsi,” or homecoming. Christian leaders say it amounts to forced conversion.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returned to power in Chhattisgarh in December 2023, after the Indian National Congress governed the state from 2018 to 2023. The BJP has held the Kanker Lok Sabha seat continuously since 1998, according to the report.

India is ranked 12th on Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is hardest to be a Christian.

This report is based on reporting by Morning Star News, as published by Christian Daily.