House church pastor beaten by Hindu extremists in India
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Hindu extremists attacked a house church pastor at the beginning of January who had been working as a day-laborer to provide for his wife and small children, but now he can barely walk, sustaining not only crippling injuries from the beatings, but also false accusations of bribing people to convert.
Pastor Jai Singh was dragged from his house church meeting on Jan. 5 by a group of Hindu nationalists on motorbikes, who brought him to a Hindu temple and forced him to do obeisance before the idols before ushering him to an empty school, where groups of six took turns beating him.
“I am just a daily laborer – my children and family are leading a very difficult life. I do not have enough means to bring up my children, I can’t even provide them a nutritious meal,” said Pastor Singh, who had a First Information Report registered against him at the police station by the nationalists.
“We were beaten up, but police registered cases against our people,” said Naresh Singh, a local homeowner in the same Bichpari village an hour north of Dehli.
Pastor Singh said that believers were strong and confident before the wave of attacks by Hindu nationalists, which sources say are instigated by high-caste Brahmins, began, but now many are cowering in fear and beginning to backslide.
India is one of the fastest-rising persecution hotbeds in the entire world, having been listed 10th on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List two years in a row in 2019 and 2020, following the election of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party Hindu nationalists in 2014.
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