Advocacy group decries sevenfold increase in attacks on India's Christians in letter to home minister

ISLAMABAD: The United Christian Forum (UCF), in a letter to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, said that it had documented an alarming increase in incidents targeting Christians across India as of November 2025.

The UCF is an Indian civil society organization that works on issues related to the protection of Christians’ rights, documenting violence and discrimination against the community, and advocating for religious freedom and social justice in the South Asian country.

According to an Indian media report, in the letter dated Dec. 23, the UCF said that 834 incidents of violence against Christians were recorded in 2024, averaging 69.5 incidents per month over the past 10 years.

It said that allegations of fraudulent religious conversions were cited as the primary reason for many of these attacks.

UCF identified Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh as the states reporting the highest number of incidents, with 157 and 184 cases, respectively, till November 2025.

Burial-related disputes 

The letter highlighted burial-related disputes in tribal regions, stating that Christians were routinely denied burial space and, in some cases, forced to exhume the bodies of their dead.

According to the forum, 23 burial-related incidents were recorded in 2025, including 19 in Chhattisgarh, two in Jharkhand, and one each in Odisha and West Bengal.

It further stated that around 40 such incidents were recorded in 2024, with 30 reported from Chhattisgarh, six from Jharkhand, and others from Bihar and Karnataka.

The letter cited specific incidents, including one on Dec. 15 in Kanker district, Chhattisgarh, where a body buried according to Christian rites was allegedly sought to be exhumed by a mob.

Disruption of prayer meetings 

It also referred to a burial being denied in Balod district in November 2025 and another incident in Odisha’s Nabarangpur district in April 2025, where a body was exhumed and burnt after the family reportedly refused to renounce Christianity.

UCF referred to a report by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Karnataka, which documented alleged police collusion with Hindutva groups, disruption of Christian prayer meetings, and the filing of complaints under sections 295A and 298 of the Indian Penal Code.

The letter also noted that freedom of religion laws, commonly referred to as anti-conversion laws, were in force in 12 Indian states and stated that, in practice, these laws target religious minorities.

Increase in attack incidents 

The forum cited an Article 14 analysis of police reports registered under conversion laws in Uttar Pradesh, stating that many were based on third-party complaints.

It also referred to recent incidents in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh involving arrests, demolitions, and cases registered during prayer gatherings and Christmas celebrations.

According to other Indian media reports, the UCF has earlier pointed to a steep rise in cases of attacks against Christians in India over the past decade, with annual incidents increasing from 127 in 2014 to 834 in 2024.

According to UCF data, violence has increased significantly since 2014 (graph).