A nine-year-old girl from an Indian family that had recently converted to Christianity was gang-raped and murdered on Sunday, 5 August, in Punjab State. Anjali Masih was playing with her friends in the city of Gurdaspur, near the Pakistan border, when a group of men lured her away by showing her a guava.

She was then gang-raped and strangled with a telephone wire.

Local Christians told World Watch Monitor that there has been a rise in anti-Christian feeling in the area, which is predominantly Hindu and Sikh, since a number of families converted to Christianity.

One Christian, who did not wish to be named, suggested the brutal attack could have been carried out by people wanting to discourage others from changing religions. India has seen a wave of anti-Christian violence in recent years, with a notable increase since Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP came to power in 2014.