Some 50 Christ devotees attending Sunday service were attacked by Hindu radicals in the Mau district of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The activists of Bajrang Dal (party of the stout and strong) and Hindu Yuva Vahini, a youth group, paraded the Christians to the nearby police station where they were detained until late night on October 10.
Seven of them, including three women and a pastor, were sent to jail for attempting forced religious conversion and other allegations.
Meanwhile two Ursuline Franciscan nuns, who had come to the city bus stand, were forcibly taken to the police station and kept there from 12:30 pm to 6 p.m. They were released under pressure from high ranking police officials from Lucknow, the state capital.
Sister Gracy Monteiro, working in Mirpur Catholic mission, told Matters India that she had gone to the bus stand to help her companion Sister Roshni Minj to board a bus to Varanasi.
Sister Minj was going home to visit her ailing father in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. As Minj went to ask about the bus, some Hindu radicals attacked the driver and forced the nuns to walk to the police station, where the Sunday worshipers were already detained..
Sister Monteiro said she was under terrible shock for almost an hour as she and Sister Minj were accused of being part of the Sunday worshippers who were allegedly attempting to forcibly converting the people.
Vijendra Rajbhar, the leader of the Christ devotees, told the police and the journalists that the Catholic nuns were not part of the prayer meeting. The Hindu radicals insisted that the nuns are part of the conversion gang.