Fifteen months after his arrest on charges under Nepal’s anti-conversion law, and more than one year after being freed from jail, Pastor Sunil Lamichhane (name changed) has finally been acquitted. A district court in western Nepal quashed the charges against him on 23 March.
Pastor Sunil was arrested in December 2024 as he distributed Christmas gifts to schoolchildren — an activity for which he had obtained official permission. While distributing the gifts, he had also shared the love of Jesus with the children. The school committee and some parents interpreted this as proselytising and reported the incident.
Following his arrest, Sunil spent 17 days in custody where he says he experienced brutal conditions and mistreatment. He was released on bail in January 2025.
Christians arrested under ‘criminal law’
Nepal’s strict anti-conversion law — introduced in 2017 — criminalises even perceived attempts to share one’s faith. Although now officially a secular country, Nepal was for two centuries until 2008 a Hindu monarchy.
In an oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council on 17 March, Joel Veldkamp of Christian Solidarity International (CSI) warned that the anti-conversion law was increasingly being used as a pretext for arresting Christians.
Speaking during an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Veldkamp specifically raised the case of Pastor Sunil, as well as that of Pastor Keshav Raj Acharya. The latter was repeatedly jailed from 2020 to 2021 on charges of ‘proselytism’.
In a response to a recent report by the Special Rapporteur, the government of Nepal claimed that Pastor Keshav “was arrested and prosecuted not because he belongs to [the] Christian community but he violated criminal laws”.
Threat to religious minorities
Veldkamp noted that the “criminal law” in question, Article 158 of Nepal’s 2017 penal code, is itself a violation of religious freedom, and therefore a threat to religious minorities in Nepal.
Article 158 prohibits “any… conduct” to “convert anyone into another religion, whether by inducement or not”. Anyone found guilty faces five years in prison.
“This law directly contradicts Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects the right of individuals to change their religion and to try to persuade others to change their religion,” Veldkamp said.
He further pointed out that the anti-conversion law was being applied selectively, and said CSI was not aware of any cases of members of the Hindu majority being prosecuted under it.
20 court appearances
Between his release on bail in January 2025 and his acquittal in March 2026, Pastor Sunil was required to appear in court more than 20 times. Each appearance required long hours of travel and waiting, often taking up an entire day. These repeated court visits were a source of great stress. Now, he says, a heavy burden has been lifted from his shoulders.
The acquittal may have brought freedom for Pastor Sunil, but it also contained a warning — that he should refrain from the kind of activities that had led to his arrest. There remains a possibility that the district attorney’s office could appeal the case to the provincial high court.
For CSI’s local partner, the anti-conversion law is being used to try to intimidate pastors like Sunil and Keshav.
But far from being intimidated, Sunil is filled with new resolve. Following his experience in jail, he feels a call to minister to drug addicts and has established a foundation to start working among addicts in his region.
