A church was vandalised in southern Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur district early on Thursday morning. This comes amid the row over an anti-conversion law. While the state government has been pushing to pass the new rules, the Christian community has been writing to the chief minister against it.
According to local report, around 5:30 am on Thursday, the 160-year-old St Joseph’s church was attacked and the statue of St Anthony broken. The police took away the statue for investigation, and filed an FIR.
On Wednesday, hundreds of people from at least 40 socio-political organisations took out a protest march in Bengaluru against the Karnataka Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2021, commonly known as the anti-conversion Bill.
“Any help or concession provided by any of our Christian institutions working in the fields of education, health, senior citizen care and orphanages, to any member not from the Christian community, can be construed as an inducement for conversion as per the Bill,” Bengaluru Archbishop Peter Machado, who attended the protest, said.
Machado had earlier said that they have submitted a memorandum to the chief minister thrice since September this year. The Christian community in the state opposes the proposed law to ban forcible religious conversions in one voice, he added.
Earlier, in November, a video had surfaced on social media platforms that purportedly showed members of the Bajrang Dal barging into a prayer hall and stopping a service mid way in Hassan district.
The video also showed Bajrang Dal members forcing people out of the prayer hall in Belur and a few women from the Christian community engaged in a verbal duel with the members of Bajrang Dal.
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