Tribal mobs armed with clubs went to the homes of sixteen families of a church in Jharkhand state, India every night for nearly three weeks, threatening to kill them if they didn’t convert to their animistic Sarna religion, a pastor told Morning Star News, a persecution monitoring group. 

“The persecutors were going with batons and wooden sticks, not giving the Christians any chance to say no, but emphasising that either they reconvert to the Sarna fold or they would kill them right then and there,” Pastor Sarabjit Bharati of Kirpa Bhavan Salom Church added.

Out of the sixteen church families threatened in one area, Pastor Bharati said two families were terrorised into returning to their ancestral Sarna religion, which involves worship of a creator god called Dharmes and a goddess identified with nature.

After reporting the case to the police, they told the [Sarna] assailants that villagers were free to follow whatever religion they chose, but as soon as they left, the mobs encircled the homes of the Christians and threatened to kill them.

When the second complaint was filed with the police on behalf of the remaining fourteen families, the police again warned the extremists not to harass Christian families, or they would face severe consequences.

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Photo: Sarna worshippers (public domain)