Police in India arrested a Christian community leader last month, accusing him of posting an objectionable comment about Hindu deities on another man’s Facebook post. His family deny he ever made the comment in question. The case draws attention to a set of provisions in India’s criminal code that function as an anti-blasphemy law in practice, even though the statute never uses that word.
Arun Pannalal, 75, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum and a vocal critic of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state of Chhattisgarh, was arrested at his home in the state capital, Raipur, on August 7, according to UCA News. He appeared before a local court the next day, which remanded him to judicial custody for 14 days.
Police booked him for deliberate and malicious acts intended to “outrage religious feelings,” for provoking a breach of peace, and for promoting enmity between communities.
The charges followed a complaint from Amit Chimnani, a spokesperson for the Hindu nationalist BJP, who submitted screenshots and web links of a Facebook post and comments under it that he said hurt Hindu sentiments.
Section 299 of Indian code
The provision used against Pannalal, Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), took effect in July 2024 as India replaced its colonial-era Indian Penal Code with a new criminal code. It carries forward the wording of the old Section 295A almost unchanged.
“Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic means or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both,” it states. Bail does not apply.
Police intimidation suspected
According to the police complaint, Pannalal made a highly objectionable comment on a Facebook post by a man named Hansraj Goyal, a post that questioned Hindu religious beliefs and referred to several Hindu deities.
His son, Vaibhav Pannalal, was quoted as saying that his father made no such comment and suspects someone impersonated him, using his name and photograph to create “mischief” on social media. He added that the arrest was planned in advance to intimidate and silence a man who has spent years raising the treatment of persecuted Christians in the state.
John Dayal, a senior journalist and spokesperson for the All India Catholic Union, called Pannalal a familiar figure among those who have tracked the persecution of Christians in Chhattisgarh over the past decade, and demanded his immediate release in a statement signed by several prominent Indian activists.
Dayal said Chhattisgarh’s chief minister, Vishnu Deo Sai, had publicly called Pannalal’s remarks objectionable before any court reviewed the case. That sequence, he said, had already buried the presumption of innocence and reduced Pannalal’s custody to a formality.
The timing, and the political identity of the man arrested, point to a case driven more by the state’s communal politics than by any communal tension the Facebook post itself might have caused, Dayal suggested.
‘Blasphemy’ laws
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has said the provision functions as a blasphemy law within India’s penal system by criminalising acts deemed to “outrage religious feelings”.
Two related provisions sit alongside it. Section 298 of the new code covers the defiling of a place of worship, carrying up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. It is non-bailable and non-compoundable, which means the complainant cannot withdraw the case and the matter must go to trial. Section 302 covers words or gestures meant to wound religious feelings, carrying up to one year in prison, a fine, or both, and is bailable and compoundable. Together the three provisions give police three overlapping charges to use whenever a complaint alleges offense to religious sentiment.
None of the three provisions carries the word blasphemy. However, all three are used the same way blasphemy laws operate elsewhere. Additionally, rights groups in India say they are invoked far more often for communal ends, one community filing a complaint against another, than to prevent actual unrest between communities.
Tool to silence opponents
For example, in Pakistan, Sections 295-A, 295-B and 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code punish insults to Islam, the desecration of the Quran and insults to the prophet of Islam. The Center for Social Justice, a Pakistani rights group, has recorded more than 2,000 people accused of blasphemy in the country since 1987, and found Christians and the Ahmadi minority disproportionately accused. Human Rights Watch has said India’s provision operates in much the same way, calling it a tool “increasingly used by the majority to silence those with whom they disagree.”
“Police make arrests based on spurious complaints even though the Supreme Court has clarified that the law does not punish every act of insult to religion,” Human Rights Watch stated.
“It must be proved that the act was malicious or deliberate, and only an aggravated form of insult to religion that also has a tendency to disrupt public order can be punished. Human Rights Watch has long called for the repeal of section 295A (of the previous Indian Penal Code), which uses overbroad language that does not meet international standards.”
Provision used against preachers
The provision has also been used against Christians for the ordinary act of preaching.
In Uttar Pradesh state’s Mau district, for example, police filed a case in 2023 against Father Vineet Vincent Pereira, a Roman Catholic priest, after he told a church congregation that Christianity was the only true religion.
The Allahabad High Court ruled in March 2026 that the statement broke the law because claiming any single faith as the only true one is wrong in a secular country and can be derogatory to other religions. The Supreme Court stayed the proceedings in April.
In Madhya Pradesh state, police used the same provision, along with charges of promoting disharmony and enmity between groups, against a pastor, identified only as Pastor Pathrose, after a man accused him of offering money to convert people, an allegation Pathrose denied. Officers seized his vehicle, his phone, and the Bibles he had been carrying to a trade fair.
International law and blasphemy
India ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1979. This protects both freedom of religion and freedom of expression. The UN Human Rights Committee has said in its General Comment No. 34 that prohibitions on a lack of respect for a religion, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the treaty.
The UN Human Rights Committee allows a narrow exception for laws that prohibit “advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence,” a threshold India’s provisions fall well short of, according to the International Commission of Jurists.
Ahmed Shaheed, then the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, urged all states with blasphemy laws to repeal them in a 2017 address ahead of a report to the UN General Assembly, warning that such laws stifle the enjoyment of the right to freedom of religion and the ability to hold a healthy dialogue about faith.
