Hindu nationalists assaulted and paraded Pastor Bipin Bihari Naik through Parjang village, Odisha state, India on Jan. 4, 2026. (Morning Star News)
NEW DELHI (Morning Star News) – As police looked on, a Hindu nationalist mob in India this month subjected a pastor to dehumanizing brutality, damaging his hearing and trying to force him to worship a Hindu deity, sources said.
The mob of 150 villagers led by cow vigilantes garlanded with footwear Pastor Bipin Bihari Naik, 35, and made him walk on thorns as they continued to assault him while parading him through Parjang village, Dhenkanal District, Odisha state, on Jan. 4. Along with tying him to a Hindu temple and forcing him to chant Hindu slogans, they tried to make him drink water mixed with cow dung, the sources said.
Pastor Naik, who sustained an injury affecting his hearing in one ear, said surviving the ordeal was a miracle as he was certain he would be killed.
“When my ordeal was unstoppable and police showed no intention of rescuing me, I surrendered my spirit to Jesus, knowing they would kill me,” Pastor Naik told Morning Star News.
The mob later indicated they were upset that he was converting Hindus to Christianity, which is not a crime in India.
Pastor Naik has been pastoring a house church in Parjang village for nearly two years after moving there eight years ago.
About 15 minutes into his Jan. 4 worship service, about 40 people led by members of the Bajarang Dal, youth wing of the Hindu extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), along with cow vigilantes, barged into the house. The self-proclaimed cow vigilantes, who call themselves Gau Rakshaks (cow protectors), often take the law into their own hands to protect cows that Hindus consider sacred.
The mob called Pastor Naik out of the house, but when he took time to do so, “they came inside, took me by my collar and dragged me out and immediately started to beat me,” he said.
The mob did not make any accusations or demands but immediately began to assault him, he said. When Pastor Naik tried to take his phone out of his pocket to give to his wife so she could call police, one of the assailants struck him on the leg with a bamboo rod, smashing the device in his pocket.
His wife, Bandana Naik, and daughters ages 13 and 10 witnessed the mob surrounding Pastor Naik and assaulting him.
“When I saw that the attackers were not ready to talk the matter out and were determined to hit my husband without reason, I took my children and escaped from a back door,” Bandana Naik told Morning Star News. “I ran straight to the nearest police station and reached there in about 15 minutes.”
Two men from the congregation tried to intervene, and the mob assaulted them as well. Pastor Naik signaled the congregation members, seven families and their children, to flee, and they escaped.
At the police station, officers told Pastor Naik’s wife to first provide a written report of the assault, something she indicated she was incapable of doing.
“I pleaded with them to quickly act and save my husband, but they insisted that I must write first,” said Bandana Naik.
She had no choice but to look for someone who could write the report for her, and she found a person to whom she then narrated the attack. After submitting the written complaint, Bandana Naik again pleaded with police to rescue her husband, but they said that the police vehicle was out on patrol, and they would have to wait for it.
“I was so anxious in my heart waiting for the police to do something, but they waited,” she said.
Meantime, the mob assaulting Pastor Naik dragged him to the village center and informed all bystanders that he had been “involved in converting all the innocent villagers to Christianity,” he said.
They then took him to a nearby temple dedicated to Hanuman, a half-monkey, half-human deity from Hindu mythology, and tied his hands behind his back to a pole on the temple premises.
The now 150-member mob kicked, slapped, pushed and pulled Pastor Naik, including a journalist from Odia newspaper who abused him in vulgar language and instigated the mob to keep hitting him, the pastor said.
Repeated slapping caused his face to swell as others kicked his back. As he fell to the floor each time they kicked him, Pastor Naik’s hands began to bleed from the strain on the ligatures binding him to the pole.
“They hit me with 40 lashes with the bamboo sticks, and my hearing got impacted because of the several hundred slaps,” said Pastor Naik, whose ear discharged pus in following days.
“Someone from the mob got water mixed with cow dung and tried to force me to drink it, but I tightened my lips and did not let it enter my mouth,” he said.
Officers patrolling the area returned to a police station to report the attack, but two policemen who went to rescue Pastor Naik returned saying that he was nowhere to be found. Pastor Naik said he was relieved to see police approaching, but they turned around and left.
He gave up all hope and prepared to surrender his spirit to God, he said.
The assailants then untied him and took him near the effigy of the deity Hanuman.
“They smeared my face with saffron vermilion and forcefully thrust my face and body before the deity and made me bow as if in worship,” he said.
Saffron is considered a sacred powder associated with worship of Hanuman.
The assailants demanded Pastor Naik chant the Hindu slogans, “Jai Shri Ram [Hail lord Ram],” but Pastor Naik said, “Jai Yeshu [Hail Jesus],” and they hit him more, he said. The mob then made a garland out of slippers, put it around his neck and paraded him throughout the village barefoot.
“One of them said, ‘Jesus was made to walk on thorns, so let us treat him the same way,’ and they went and fetched branches of the bush that had sharp long thorns and spread them on the road and forced me to walk on them,” Pastor Naik said.
While marching him down the road, the mob crossed the same police station where his wife was still waiting anxiously for officers to rescue her husband. Showing no fear of police, the Hindu nationalists boldly continued parading him with impunity, he said.
After going around the entire village, the mob brought Pastor Naik back and tied him in the Hindu temple.
“I insisted that I go with the police and show them where my husband was,” Bandana Naik said.
She boarded the police vehicle, and they found him tied to the pole at the Hindu temple. It was after 2 p.m. when police rescued the pastor.
“I waited for the rescue for two-and-a-half hours in the police station while my husband suffered the horrendous attack,” Bandana Naik said.
Police Failures
While taking Pastor Naik into protective custody, officers expressed surprise at his condition, saying, “We thought that the mob by now must have broken your hands and legs. We were expecting to carry you on a stretcher by now, but you look okay to us,” according to the pastor.
Police did not rush him to the hospital for treatment, his wife said. Officers refused to register his First Information Report (FIR), instead making him write an application stating that “the mob misunderstood my activities and mistook me for a person carrying out illegal conversions in the village and thus attacked me,” he said.
“The police threatened to file a case against me and put me in jail if I refused to oblige,” Pastor Naik added.
Officers demanded he sign documents, including some blank papers, he said.
When a Christian leader arrived to help, he found “Naik’s face swollen, smeared with saffron color, no footwear on his feet and both his hands bleeding.”
“He could not wipe his face or close his shirt buttons, as his hands were full of blood and he was in much pain,” said the source on condition of anonymity. “Police cared nothing and did not give him first aid, nor a glass of water to drink.”
When the Christian leader asked police the reason for the delay in rescuing Pastor Naik, an officer said, “We are only four policemen, and they were a huge mob; how could we rescue him? Besides, Naik is involved in conversion, and how can you expect us to protect him?” the source said.
A policeman then began to tell the Christian leader about treatment Hindus are receiving in Bangladesh, such as being burned alive.
“I was shocked at the hatred that has entered the hearts of security forces who are supposed to protect people in an unbiased manner,” said the Christian leader. “I wanted to question him as to why he was settling the score of the treatment given to Hindus in Bangladesh with a Christian here in India.”
Police provided no report for the pastor to bring to the hospital for treatment, the source said.
“In fact, police took in writing from Christian leaders that they are taking Pastor Bipin from the police station in healthy condition,” he said.
Fearing being followed, Christian leaders drove him and his family 16 miles from the village to his brother’s house via a different route. After Pastor Naik had washed and composed himself, they drove him to a hospital, where they did not tell the attending doctor that he was assaulted by a mob, “otherwise the doctor would have asked for a police report, which was not given to us,” said the leader.
Pastor Naik had severe pain in his back and legs.
“The doctor gave Naik a few injections to ease his body pain, dressed his open wounds and prescribed antibiotics for his wounds,” said the source.
Only later did Pastor Naik realize that his hearing was impacted because of the blows on his face, and “there was constant pus discharge from one of my ears,” he said. He was on medication and might have to get a CT-scan for his ear, he said.
About 30 Christian leaders approached the office of the Superintendent of Police on Jan. 12 and submitted an application to register a formal complaint. The superintendent forwarded their application to the Parjang police station, leading to the registration of FIR No. 0041 dated Jan. 13 against Nigamananda Dalbehera and 20 unidentified people under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 for “causing hurt,” “wrongful restraint,” “unlawful assembly,” “rioting,” “being armed with a deadly weapon” and “criminal intimidation.”
The pastor and his family shifted to an undisclosed location 44 miles from the village and plan never to return.
“It has been a difficult decision for us as a family to leave our home there, but we are sad that the villagers conspired and police were hand-in-glove with them, thus the decision,” Pastor Naik told Morning Star News.
The assailants approached his landlord and threatened him with dire consequences if he allowed the family back.
“Both my daughters saw them beat me,” Pastor Naik said. “They were traumatized and could not sleep for four nights and did not eat food for three days. My youngest kept saying that ‘they hit my papa.’”
He previously faced aggression three times, but not none as severe as this case, he said.
“Local people said, ‘How can a boy live among us, stay in the village and teach Christianity,’” he said. “But the truth is that I only discipled those who believed in Jesus; I did not force anybody.”
The pastor said he was grateful to God for saving him.
“Jesus bore so much suffering for us; my suffering is nothing compared to my Lord’s suffering,” said Naik.
The hostile tone of the National Democratic Alliance government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, against non-Hindus has emboldened Hindu extremists in several parts of the country to attack Christians since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in May 2014, religious rights advocates say.
India ranked 12th on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, up from 31st in 2013 before Modi came to power.
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