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Morning Star News<\/a> – March 23, 2020<\/p>\n HYDERABAD<\/strong>, India<\/strong>, March 23, 2020 (Morning Star News<\/a>) \u2013 Forcing them to pose like Christ on the cross, police last week beat Christians in custody on baseless charges in northern India\u2019s Uttar Pradesh state, sources said.<\/p>\n On March 15 a church of 200 people was immersed in a Sunday service when 30 Hindu extremists brandishing hockey sticks and steel rods arrived with police at the worship hall built on the premises of the pastor\u2019s home in the Kunda area of Pratapgarh District, sources said.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I saw them armed with hockey sticks and steel rods, I understood that they had come to attack us,\u201d Pastor Indresh Kumar Gautam, 24, told Morning Star News. \u201cI got down from the pulpit and decided to face them before they cause nuisance or attack any of the members of the congregation.\u201d<\/p>\n He could see they were young men of the Hindu extremist Bajrang Dal from his and neighboring villages, he said. The pastor said they accused the church of increasing conversions to Christianity in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cI told them clearly that we do not convert anyone, and that we had only accepted Christian faith and would be only praying for everyone,\u201d he said. \u201cIf anybody chooses to follow Jesus after attending prayers, they are free to do so as the Indian constitution has granted the right to practice one\u2019s faith freely.\u201d<\/p>\n The intruders shouted at the worshippers to disperse immediately or they would be beaten brutally, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had already started attacking us, and the police kept looking on,\u201d Pastor Gautam said. \u201cThey seized the Bibles and the sound instruments, but the officers both male and female did not stop them.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, police forced five worshippers into police vehicles and took them to the Kunda police station, he said.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.christianheadlines.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Morning Star News – March 23, 2020 HYDERABAD, India, March 23, 2020 (Morning Star News) \u2013 Forcing them to pose like Christ on the cross, police last week beat Christians in custody on baseless charges in northern India\u2019s Uttar Pradesh state, sources said. On March 15 a church of 200 people was immersed in a … Continue reading Christians Suffer Police Brutality, Illegal Arrests in Uttar Pradesh, India<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[14837,175,177,14836,14833,39,14835,241,14834],"class_list":["post-18383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-white-horse","tag-bajrang-dal","tag-christianity","tag-christians","tag-hindu-extremist","tag-hyderabad","tag-india","tag-pastor-indresh-kumar-gautam","tag-persecution","tag-uttar-pradesh-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-4Mv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18385,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18383\/revisions\/18385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}