Thursday, November 10, 2005

Tortured for the sake of Gospel in Himachal Pradesh

Pr.Feroz Masih, is a servant of the Lord and serving Him in Himachal since twenty years with his wife and children. This sixty five years old Pastor came to the Lord with his family from an interial poor back ground. He lives in his house and having a church where 40-60 people are gathering on every Sundays and has many house churches in the surrounding villages.

On 4th of November, Friday he went to the village called ‘Noura’ as usually. This village is 6 kilometers away from Baijanath where he lives. While he was going to the village a few VHP activists saw him. When Pastor Feroz reached the house where he wanted conduct the prayer meeting, the VHP people who saw him called more people and arrived to the house where Pastor Feroz was.

They started to argue with Pastor Feroz and the house owner whose name is Lekharaj and with the people who came for the prayer. By this time a lot of VHP supporters assembled from different places.

The argument soon turned bitter and the VHP activists abused Christianity and the people present verbally. Not only this they also beat and kick Pastor Feroz, Lekharaj and other people who had gathered there for prayer.

Pastor Feroze tells us that around 200 people gathered there to beat them. Among the mob young people beaten him on his head many times and kicked in his abdomen very badly. This happened at 3 O clock in the afternoon.

In the village there was nobody to help him. After a while the VHP activists send a group of Police to the village and they brought the Pastor to the Police station.

The mob also arrived at the station and again beat him in front of the Police. The Police put him in the cell till 10 O clock in the night and allowed him to go home only later.

While he was in the station the VHP people and Police questioned him, and ask him to sign some of the documents which he doesn’t know and asked about his Christian activities. He himself doesn’t know what he said in the painful condition.

The next day (Saturday) this was one of the major news in the front page of a daily news paper called 'Amar Ujala'.

The VHP people have also threatened Pastor Feroze Masih that they will come to the temple which is in front of his house after ten days for a small festival. According to reports on that day Pastor Feroze has been asked to call all his believers there as well so that the VHP might reconvert Christians back to Hinduism.

The VHP have threatened him that if he is not going to comply then his house will be burnt and his life also will be in jeopardy.

The Christians somehow managed to conduct the Sunday worship in the Church under great pressure while the VHP came again to the church and threatened the Pastor and his son Ramesh Bhatti.
Special to Christian Persecution India