Pastor in India, driven from his home, beaten and choked for filing police report

by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A pastor in India whose family’s house was demolished a month ago was assaulted on his way home from grocery shopping by the same people who forced him to flee his village.

A village Brahmin known only as “Laxman” had told pastor Lalu Kirade, 29, to renounce his Christian faith on pain of death in March, forcing him, his wife, and children to move to a makeshift shelter three miles from Bilood village when they refused.

“They had sprung on me like a pack of wild dogs,” Pastor Kirade told Morning Star News of the most recent episode on April 3rd, when eight people assaulted him. “They told me to call upon my God to come and rescue me.”

Kirade explained that the attack was punishment, the assailants claimed, for his filing a police report about the original assault in March–a police report that was never acted upon by authorities.

“The police have been very non-cooperative,” he said. “The policeman was constantly demanding monetary favor from me, and when I refused, he got very upset with me.”

India is number 10 on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List for the persecution of Christians, having leaped 21 places since 2013–the year before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party were elected.

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