UP Police arrests man for illegal religious conversion

Bareilly (UP), Jul 15 (PTI) A man has been arrested here on the charge of illegally converting people to Christianity by offering them money, jobs and other handouts, police said on Tuesday.

Additional Superintendent of Police Anshika Verma said the accused, Lalji, a native of the Mau district, has converted more than 200 people into Christianity and kept a note of each of them in a diary.

Four other diaries have been seized from the accused, and the police are trying to find out his contacts and financial sources, the officer said.

Police claimed the accused tempted financially weak and uneducated people of the Hindu faith with money, jobs, houses and help in marriage for them to convert to Christianity.

Police said the matter came to light after a Hindu Jagran Manch member complained to police about Lalji preaching falsehoods about Hindu gods and goddesses and converting people into Christianity deceitfully.

Based on the complaint, the accused was booked on Monday under BNS section 299 (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious belief) and the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Religious Conversion Act, police said.

Originally from Mungeshwari village in the Mau district, Lalji came to live in Faridpur in 2002. He told police that earlier he had worked as a labourer. In 2008, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and was admitted to a hospital in Delhi, where he met a doctor and a nurse who impressed him, police said.

According to the police, the diaries recovered from Lalji's room have names of all the people of the area, and it is written in front of each name that "Preaching has been done ('updesh de diya gaya')".

The SHO of Faridpur police station, Radheshyam, said that from this, it is being assumed that the accused has converted all these people into Christianity. PTI COR NAV APL NSD NSD