This is the sixth article in a series of reports on people who won their legal battles after being falsely charged under the anti-conversion laws brought in by BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
New Delhi: “Satya pareshan ho sakta hain, lekin parajit nahi.” Truth can be troubled but not defeated.
These inspiring words, etched somewhere inside a prison in Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa district, consoled an incarcerated Ajay Singh* and kept hope for justice alive.
“We believed that parmeshwar (the almighty) would free us from this ordeal. We were indeed worried but also hopeful that if not today, then tomorrow, truth would prevail,” he said.
Singh’s ‘truth’ was that he did not unlawfully convert a tribal Hindu man to Christianity. He was merely conducting prayers to Jesus Christ.
It took him, and two others, more than seven years to prove this in a court. Singh (30), Santosh (30) and Hukum (28) were booked under the unlawful conversion law in MP in 2017. All three men belong to the Barela tribal community.
After a protracted legal battle, which included an initial setback in the form of a conviction, the three men were in July last year acquitted by a court in Khandwa district. Around 35% of the southern MP district’s population belongs to tribal communities.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
The court ruled that the case was not credible and technically flawed. Singh says the case was entirely fabricated and that he did not even know of the complainant and victim of the alleged unlawful conversion, Raju Bhilala, till the FIR was registered.
The case against Ajay, Santosh and Hukum, who were engaged in social work in the name of Jesus Christ, was lodged on April 9, 2017. Raju Bhilala, who ran a small kiosk in a nearby village, said that he was unwell when Singh, one of his customers, advised him to visit Sitabedi Mal village to get checked by a doctor. Bhilala alleged that Singh took him to his village under the pretext of getting him cured. When he reached the village around 11:30 am, he noticed that a pandal had been erected near a house. There were 40-50 persons present there. Three men were seated on a chair. A woman with a Bible in front of her was sitting on the ground. Bhilala alleged that Singh gave him a locket bearing a cross with Jesus. The three men, he alleged, were saying that ‘There is no bhagwan’ and that Hindu gods are only ‘clay’. Bhilala continued that they asked him to leave the Hindu faith and adopt Christianity, and said that if he developed faith in Jesus, all his “sorrow, pain and ailments” would be gone. They also promised him ‘respect’ and a good education for his family abroad, alleged Bhilala. He said that he informed some of his associates about the incident, and they arrived at the scene. Sometime later, Singh and two others were taken to the nearest police station.
An FIR was lodged against them under Sections 3 and 4 of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 1968. The law prohibits the conversion of a person, or an attempt to convert them, either directly or otherwise, from one religious faith to another by the use of force or by allurement or by any fraudulent means.
On April 18, 2022, more than five years after the case was lodged, a court of judicial magistrate division 1, Khandwa, Manish Raghuvanshi convicted and sentenced them to one year each in prison on the testimonies of Bhilala and his associates, allegedly linked to right-wing organisation Bajrang Dal, although they denied the connection in court.
Singh submitted in court that although he had faith in Jesus, he was a Hindu on paper, and therefore could not have converted Bhilala to a different faith, Christianity. The judicial magistrate court, however, said that it was not necessary that a person accused of unlawful conversion also belonged to the same religion as the religion he was converting the other person into. The court also did not give much weight to the argument that since the witnesses were allegedly members of the Bajrang Dal, their testimonies were biased and motivated by religious fanaticism.
Singh says they were devastated by the verdict. “We were dismayed. But parmeshwar gave us the confidence to fight on. It was his scheme and all we did was just pray and believe,” said Singh.
The three men filed a criminal appeal against the conviction, arguing that it was against well-established principles of law. Singh’s version of the incident was totally different from the complainant’s. A native of Burhanpur, Singh had been visiting villages in neighbouring Khandwa since 2014 to do ‘sevakai‘ or service dedicated to Jesus, and organise prayer sessions. He is also a farmer and a social activist. On the said day in 2017 – it was a Sunday – Singh said he was invited to conduct a “changai prarthna” or healing prayer session for a local resident whose wife had not been keeping well. “It was a small private event,” recalls Singh. They had set up a pandal and sealed it with jute sacks from all sides. Around 40 persons from neighbouring areas, including the relatives of the host family, were invited. Food was also served.
Singh says that apart from the people they knew, they had not invited anyone. Bhilala was not invited. “I didn’t even know of him. He came to our meeting and started recording a video. And only after he reported it and filed a complaint, I came to know who he was,” said Singh, refuting all the claims made by Bhilala in his FIR.
Singh said those who disrupted the event had come prepared with malafide intentions. Around 20-25 persons barged into the venue and started threatening those attending the programme. “They did not say anything to us. They straight away accused us of conversion,” said Singh. “They wanted to ensure that we did not hold such meetings. They just wanted an excuse so that they could deter people like us who believe in Christ to leave the area. Their intention was to instil fear among the people so that they stop believing in Christ and distance themselves from the faith.”
Contrary to the charges filed against him, he said those attending such meetings meetings came on their own will to share their “sorrow and pain”. “We don’t invite them. They call us to their homes,” Singh said.
When the matter came under appeal to the court of fourth additional sessions judge Khandwa, Kamlesh Kumar Kol, all the holes in the prosecution theory were exposed. And on July 4, 2024, Judge Kol acquitted Singh, Santosh and Hukum, ruling that the witnesses against them were not credible and that the prosecution story was doubtful.
Bhilala’s own testimony, as the victim and main witness, failed the test of reliability and was inconsistent. During his cross examination in court, he failed to provide any evidence to show that he was offered any sort of allurement to convert to Christianity or had adopted any faith other than Hinduism. Section 2 of the 1968 law says allurement means “offer of any temptation in the form of any gift or gratification either in cash or kind, or grant of any material benefit either monetary or otherwise”. The law defines “conversion” as “renouncing one religion and adopting another”.
In his cross examination, Bhilala admitted that he had gone to the event by his own free will and couldn’t state what allurement he was offered. He also could not provide any details on the involvement of the two other accused persons other than Singh.
Nand Kishore and Anil, allegedly linked to the Bajrang Dal, said they had reached the venue after receiving a call from Bhilala. Anil repeated the story Raju had told him. The investigating officer of the case told the court that apart from Bhilala, Ajay and Anil, he had not recorded the testimonies of any of the 40-50 persons assembled at the event. Judge Kol found this odd, since they were “important witnesses” and Anil was not even present at the spot.
Hari Shankar, another alleged Bajrang Dal activist, also could not provide any evidence of conversion and repeated whatever Bhilala had told him. The court said that these witnesses were not credible as none of them had heard what was said at the event and were only repeating what the discredited Bhilala had told them.
Also, mere possession of a Bible was “not sufficient enough to show that religious conversion was being done”, said Judge Kol.
The court also found that a mandatory provision of the law had been violated during the prosecution of the case. Section 7 of the 1968 law states that prosecution can be instituted under the law only after the approval of the district magistrate, but no document was submitted by the prosecution to show that sanction had been sought from the concerned authority.
Even after being acquitted, however, Singh continues to face harassment. He says that his landlord, a friendly person from his own community, was harassed so much by right-wing activists that Singh was forced to relocate to a house 30 km from where he worked. “They threatened him [the landlord] that if he did not evict me, they would run a bulldozer over his house. He had no option,” said Singh.
He believes that the larger motive of such right-wing activists is to prevent the downtrodden in Hindu society to improve or slip out of their influence. “They don’t want any change or change of heart in our lives, so that we can continue to come under their influence,” said Singh.
*Names of the accused persons have been changed to protect their anonymity.
