Indian state could introduce the death penalty for religious conversions

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CNA Staff, Mar 10, 2025 / 17:45 pm (CNA).

Leaders in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, home to 72 million people, are considering punishing with the death penalty those who allegedly force people into religious conversion — a change that Christian leaders say could harm the state’s Christians, who already are persecuted under the law through false accusations. 

Mohan Yadav, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, said March 8 that he plans to amend the state’s anti-conversion law to capitally punish those found to be fraudulently forcing people to convert, adding that “religious conversion will not be tolerated,” reported UCA News, a Catholic news outlet. Christians make up just 0.27% of the population in Madhya Pradesh, UCA News said. 

Madhya Pradesh’s anti-conversion law had already since 2021 resulted in sentences of 10 years in jail for violators. 

Though religious freedom is provided for in the Indian Constitution, anti-conversion laws have been an increasing problem for the tens of millions of Christians in India. In recent years, at least a dozen of India’s 28 states passed laws to criminalize “forced” conversions, most of them in Hindu nationalist party-ruled states from the early 2000s onward. 

In practice, the laws have been used to selectively prevent the practice of the Christian faith in a nation that is roughly 80% Hindu, 14% Muslim, and just 2% Christian. The laws have led to the arrests of clergy and sparked acts of violence against Christians.

In particular, in India’s most populous state of northern Uttar Pradesh with a population of 231 million, hundreds of pastors and even senior Catholic priests had been imprisoned on conversion charges.

Despite the dangers for Christians, an Indian Supreme Court hearing last June cast doubt on the legality of Uttar Pradesh state’s anti-conversion laws under the country’s constitution, which in Article 25 provides that Indians have the “right freely to profess, practice, and propagate religion.”

In Madhya Pradesh — the state considering the death penalty for alleged forced conversions — a Protestant pastor was in 2019 acquitted of charges held against him under India’s state-level anti-conversion laws. Police had arrested the pastor, his wife, and his 6-year-old son, stripped them of their clothes, beat them, and kept them detained without bail for three days, finally convicting the family of forcing conversion to the Christian faith.