According to the Uttar Pradesh Police, both Hindus and Muslims were persuaded to convert to Christianity in the Fatehpur district through promises of marriage to attractive young women, financial support, food, and jobs at Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology, and Sciences (SHUATS). As per a police affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court last month, two brothers, SHUATS vice chancellor Rajendra B. Lal and director Vinod B. Lal, supported the entire scheme.
The case began on April 14, 2022, when a local Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) office-bearer filed a police complaint against the pastor and other ECI associates, alleging that they had enticed and converted “around 90 Hindus” over 40 days with promises of financial aid and employment. Police made 26 arrests on April 15 of last year and arrested 55 persons under the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021—35 named and 20 unnamed.
The Indian Penal Code (IPC) was also cited in the FIR, specifically sections 153A (which encourages animosity between groups based on religion), 506 (criminal intimidation), 420 (cheating), and 468 (forgery for cheating). After the Lal brothers appealed the Allahabad High Court’s 28 February decision to deny them anticipatory relief, the Supreme Court put a hold on their arrest on March 4. While providing them with temporary protection, the court also requested a response from the UP government and police.
A pastor of the Evangelical Church of India in Hariharganj, Fatehpur—the religious organisation at the centre of the dispute—is alleged to have admitted to conducting mass conversions through “fraud and allurement” in the police affidavit submitted in response to the anticipatory release application. The Yeshu Darbar Trust, an NGO that hosts religious gatherings in at least 12 of its locations in Prayagraj and other towns in UP, Gujarat, and Jharkhand, is where the foreign cash that SHUATS, a private institution in Prayagraj, received are said to have been sent, according to the police. Then, it is said, they were given to pastors engaged in the “illegal conversion” of underprivileged Muslims and Hindus.
Rajendra Lal is the founder-bishop of the Yeshu Darbar Trust, according to investigators. The UP Police asserted in their affidavit in opposition to the brothers’ anticipatory bail application that SHUATS had collected more than Rs 34 crore from overseas sources since 2005 but that despite repeated inquiries, the brothers had refused to divulge how the money was being utilised.
According to the affidavit, the pastor “admitted” that one conversion took place in 40 days and that similar conversions were also made with the assistance of a mission hospital’s employees there. The affidavit doesn’t specify which hospital it’s referring to. According to the police, video CDs that showed one of the brothers and his wife performing similar “conversions” were discovered during searches that were carried out at the Yeshu Darbar Trust’s headquarters in Prayagraj and other locations on the CJM Fatehpur’s orders.
The affidavit continues, “In the same way, it is seen in the other CD that a programme of religious conversion and naming by Christian religion is being conducted.” “In the aforesaid case, audio and video of renaming of young Hindu kids are very clear,” it states.
According to the affidavit, Aadhaar cards were modified to reflect the converts’ new names, and comments from such converts that were recorded by police investigators and the magistrate confirmed this claim. The police support their claims with a few witness statements. The document quotes one witness as saying he received Rs 20,000 for each convert, while another says he was instructed to go to church every day for 40 days before being told he had been converted.
