Christian Woman Miscarries after Assault in India

Kunika Kashyap after Jan. 2, 2025 assault by relatives who practice tribal religion in Bastar District, Chhattisgarh state, India. (Salim Hakku for Morning Star News)

NEW DELHI (Morning Star News) – A Christian woman in central India suffered a miscarriage this month after tribal relatives who practice traditional religion beat and strangled her, sources said.

Kunika Kashyap was more than six weeks pregnant when she was admitted to Government District Hospital-Maharani in Jagdalpur, Bastar District, Chhattisgarh state in serious condition on Jan. 2. Tribal village headman Ganga Ram Kashyap, his wife and adult daughter had assaulted her that day after the headman began video recording her in hopes that he might catch her praying for a common relative – also a Christian – as evidence of some perceived crime, said her husband, Mandu Ram Kashyap.

The 25-year-old Kunika Kashyap, of Bade Bodal village, had gone to visit her cousin’s sister, a Christian who was ill, about 150 meters from her home. Tribal headman Ganga Ram Kashyap, brother-in-law of the sick woman and a cousin of Kunika Kashyap’s husband, spotted her entering the house.

While Kunika Kashyap was sitting at her bedside, Ganga Ram Kashyap began recording her on his mobile phone, said Salim Hakku, a Christian leader from Jagdalpur.

“He suspected that Kunika might pray with her sick relative and wanted to capture it as proof on his cell phone,” Hakku told Morning Star News.

Kunika Kashyap objected, but Ganga Ram Kashyap refused to stop, she said.

“When he continued filming even after my protests, I swatted his hand away,” Kunika Kashyap told Morning Star News from her hospital bed.

She said Ganga Ram Kashyap immediately began to assault her. His wife and daughter rushed out of their house at the commotion and joined in the attack, Kunika Kashyap said.

“Ganga Ram kicked my belly with his foot, strangled me and hit me violently,” she told Morning Star News. “His wife and daughter joined him in beating me with a thick wooden bamboo, kicked my chest, my stomach, my head and my whole body brutally.”

Kunika Kashyap managed to escape, said her husband.

“It was only God’s doing that enabled her to escape from three people continuously beating her from all sides,” said her husband, who works as a mason and daily wage laborer in Jagdalpur, 16 miles from their village.

Kunika Kashyap was in severe pain when her husband rushed her to the government hospital in Jagdalpur, where treatment began at around 5 p.m., he said.

Medical records state that she was admitted with “neck pain, pain over right leg, pain over temporo-occipital and swelling, abdomen pain and chest pain, contusion over neck region,” and that she was six weeks and six days pregnant.

“The initial ultrasound showed that the fetus was alive,” said her husband, “but by 6:30 in the evening she suffered a miscarriage.”

The couple has been married for two years, and this was her first pregnancy, he said.

Discharged from the hospital on Jan. 6, Kunika Kashyap was still undergoing treatment at this writing.

Husband Mandu Ram Kashyap, who along with church elders approached the local police station and filed a written complaint against Ganga Ram Kashyap on Jan. 2, said he suspects officers have not registered a First Information Report (FIR), as he has received no copy of one.

“Though the police said that they would register an FIR after initial investigation, the police never called us for any inquiry, nor recorded my wife’s statement,” Mandu Ram Kashyap said.

The police visited him and his wife only once, on Jan. 7, and asked them about the precise area of the house where the assault had taken place, which they showed them, he said.

Mandu Ram Kashyap and his wife are one of 50 Christian families in the village of about 120 families. Children of Christian parents, each has been Christian for more than 20 years and attend the Episcopal Methodist Church.

Other Incidents

Other Christians in the village have been targeted, said Mandu Ram Kashyap.

“We have been facing strong opposition for the past few years from the tribal village headman and the villagers,” he said.

Christians are not allowed to draw water from the same site as other villagers, said “nor are we allowed to bury our dead in our private property,” he said.

When Budai Kashyap, a 90-year-old Christian woman, died on Dec. 29, the Christian community buried her on private land they had purchased. Headman Ganga Ram Kashyap reached the burial site and asked if they had permission for the burial. The confrontation escalated and turned into a physical altercation between the Christians and the headman and his men, Manu Ram Kashyap said.

On Jan. 7, the son of Pastor Subhash Baghel was not allowed to bury his father in Chhindawada village even though a section of the hamlet has been designated for Christians, Hakku said.

“Even though his aunt and grandfather were previously buried in that graveyard, the villagers and the headman refused to let him bury his father,” he said.

The pastor’s son filed a petition in the Chhattisgarh High Court asking permission to bury his father in the village graveyard, which the court rejected on Jan. 12. While his father’s body awaits burial in the Jagdalpur mortuary, he is appealing to the Supreme Court.

Hakku said Christians were shocked that authorities supported a shutdown in protest of alleged forced conversion and the Christian community’s strife with headman Ganga Ram Kashyap. The protest was organized by the Sarva Adivasi Samaj (All Tribal Society) in Bastar District for Jan. 7.

“It was quite shocking that the authorities gave permission to the headman to carry out the protest despite written complaints against the headman by the Christian community in two different incidents,” Hakku said. “Instead of acting against the headman, the police supported the shutdown. This shows the bias of the authorities.”

The hostile tone of the National Democratic Alliance government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), against non-Hindus, has emboldened Hindu extremists and others to attack Christians since Narendra Modi took power in May 2014, religious rights advocates say.

India ranked 11th on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. The country was 31st in 2013, but its position worsened after Modi came to power.

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