By Nolina Minj
On August 14, the police in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, held a meeting with nearly a hundred pastors of Pentecostal churches in the district. In the meeting, the police told the pastors that all house churches in Raipur were to stop functioning until they sought permission from the district collector to operate.
Christian activists and pastors are calling this verbal demand – no order was served in writing – an informal ban on house churches.
Run mainly by pastors belonging to Pentecostal denominations of Christianity, house churches are small congregations that gather inside homes and not in formal church buildings.
In recent years, they have been the target of an increasing number of attacks by Hindutva groups in the state.
Between January and July this year, Chhattisgarh saw 86 “cases of systematic targeting” of Christians, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s Religious Liberty Commission. This is the second highest number of cases among all states, second only to Uttar Pradesh.
Many of these incidents involved mobs storming house churches during or after Sunday prayer meetings. Activists from the Christian community allege these mobs were led by vigilantes from Hindutva organisations.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.