Priest beaten up by four masked Hindu extremists DURING church service

A PRIEST was beaten unconscious by a masked gang of Hindu extremists armed with bamboo sticks during a church service.
Pastor Lalta Ram, 66, was knocked out and brutally injured by a mob who accused him of putting local
sorcerers out of business.
The pastor was hospitalised for five days when vigilantes broke into the service, held in a makeshift tent, and left him with a broken hand, a two inch gash to his head and six-inch cut to his other hand.
Pastor Ram had been forced to shut the church just two weeks earlier after police arrested and accused him and assistant pastor Vijay Bahadur of forcing people to convert and putting local sorcerers out of business.
Pastor Bahadur said: "They further claimed that because of the church and the preaching, all the sorcerers in the area had lost their businesses, as the people no longer believed in them but in Jesus.”
The men were released after 200 Christians went to the police station to defend the priests.
The horror attack last month is just one in rising numbers of Hindu extremism.
There are an estimated 63million Christians in India with 80 per cent of the country’s 1.3billion population identifying as Hindu.
Christian human rights group International Christian Concern (ICC) reported 36 incidents of Christian persecution in India between January and March 2016.
A spokesman for the group said: “Hindu extremists often use false claims of forced conversions to shut down churches and muzzle Christians. Christians that choose to openly share their faith risk being beaten or imprisoned under false charges.”
It is against the law to convert in five states in India, with others expected to introduce the laws too.
Christians fear the anti-conversion laws will lead to false accusations by Hindu extremists.
Last month 29 Christians were beaten after refusing to reconvert to Hinduism in the village of Katholi in India.
Hindu extremists went on the rampage at a public meeting and vandalised their homes.