On a warm summer’s day on 14 April 2022, pastor A* was at home on the premises of Broadwell Christian Hospital in Fatehpur when he received a panicked phone call.

The call came from the 118-year-old Evangelical Church of India, located barely 500 m away in the Hariharganj locality of the eastern UP town. At the church, pastor Vijay Masih was about to finish up a daily prayer service, when all hell broke loose.

Around 55 Christians had gathered inside the church that day to commemorate Maundy Thursday—a holy Christian date to signify the last supper of Jesus Christ. The schedule for the prayer service was between 6 and 7.30 pm.

At 7 pm, around 200–250 people affiliated with the Hindu right-wing group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), stormed the church and locked the doors. Slogans against an alleged conversion at the church were raised, along with chants of “Jai Shri Ram”.

The VHP held those inside the church captive for one-and-a-half hours, before the police arrived at 9 pm, along with the local media. As a part of the initial inquiry based on the VHP’s allegations of conversion, the police asked everyone in the church to produce Aadhaar cards.
It was A who had called the police. At the scene, based on a complaint by a VHP member, the UP police booked 55 people present inside the church in a first information report at Fatehpur’s Kotwali police station.

There was no police action against the VHP.

In this concluding part of our three-part series on the misuse of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act 2021, we explain how the Fatehpur church case has led to cases against 201 Christians in four FIRs filed over nine months—making this one of UP’s largest anti-conversion cases.


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