{"id":181600,"date":"2025-08-18T17:32:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/?p=181600"},"modified":"2025-08-18T17:32:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:32:54","slug":"vhp-bajrang-dal-members-storm-raipur-church-assault-worshippers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/2025\/08\/18\/vhp-bajrang-dal-members-storm-raipur-church-assault-worshippers.html","title":{"rendered":"VHP, Bajrang Dal members storm Raipur church; assault worshippers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-181603 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-18-at-5.30.59-PM-390x218.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"390\" height=\"218\" \/>Raipur: Members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal forced their way into a church in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, alleging that the Christian community was engaged in forced conversions.<\/p>\n<p>According to Kashmir Media Service, the Hindu nationalist groups vandalised the premises, physically assaulted attendees, and recited the Hanuman Chalisa inside the church, leaving worshippers in panic.<\/p>\n<p>Footage circulating online captures the tense clash between Hindutva activists and members of the Christian community, with police personnel visibly struggling to control the situation.<\/p>\n<p>Chhattisgarh has long witnessed friction around matters of religion and caste. A significant number of Dalits and Adivasis have turned to Christianity over time in search of relief from entrenched caste-based oppression. Yet, the state has also repeatedly seen attacks against Christians by Hindu right-wing organisations.<\/p>\n<p>This incident is part of a broader pattern. On 26 July, two Catholic nuns from Kerala were taken into custody by state police following accusations by Hindutva groups of human trafficking and conversions, though they were later granted bail. Prior to that, in May, VHP and Bajrang Dal workers stormed a Sunday service, chanting \u201cJai Shri Ram\u201d while roughing up congregants.<\/p>\n<p>The assault in Raipur has once again unsettled the Christian community, underlining the increasing atmosphere of intimidation and violence linked to ongoing false allegations of forced conversions. KMS-20A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raipur: Members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal forced their way into a church in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, alleging that the Christian community was engaged in forced conversions. According to Kashmir Media Service, the Hindu nationalist groups vandalised the premises, physically assaulted attendees, and recited the Hanuman Chalisa inside the church, leaving worshippers &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":181603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}