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Sacrilege' law threatens Christians in India's Punjab state

Michie

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Thanks to misuse of a law against “outraging religious feelings,” a Christian pastor in Punjab state, India still cannot return home. His church is shut.

He survives on daily physical labor, and some months there is not enough money to feed his family or pay his children’s school fees. A second pastor who was arrested alongside him lives the same way, moving from place to place, doing what he can find and living constantly in fear.

What happened to them in police custody in 2023 nearly killed one of them.

Both were wrongly charged under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings,” with a maximum sentence of three years, no mandatory minimum and the right to seek bail. Punjab has had a state sacrilege law since 2008, but its criminal provisions were limited and police routinely used the IPC instead.

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