Christians in a tiny northern Indian district suffered at least 12 attacks in September that community leaders say were instigated by false accusations against missionaries over the conversion of Hindus.

Pastors were beaten up, faithful arrested and on Sept. 30 services disrupted in continuing violence allegedly carried out by Hindu groups in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh.

The rights group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) cited “false propaganda” carried in some media outlets about claimed miracles and allurements being used by pastors to win converts.

ADF official A.C. Michael told ucanews.com on Sept. 28 that pastors were arrested like terrorists at midnight, church goers had been threatened and arbitrary restraints were imposed on Christian activities.

He said this was generating “terrific fear” in the Jaunpur district, which is about 230 kilometres southeast of the state capital, Lucknow.

The rights’ group listed 12 incidents that occurred from Sept. 5-25, including attempts to inti-midate pastors into not conduct-ing church services.

Pastor Benjamin said such incidents had increased since the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power with a Hindu monk-turned-politician, Yogi Adityanath, becoming state Chief Minister in March 2017.

Nearly 80 percentage of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with 200 million people, are Hindus. Christians constitute only 0.18 percentage of the state’s population while Muslims number more than 19%.