Pastor Sushil Kumarand his wife rose at 3 a.m. on July 8 in their village in northern India as always to pray. They came out of their house 90 minutes later to find their 22-year-old son’s body hanging from the bamboo ceiling of a nearby animal shed.
Nilesh Kumar had been tortured and strangled to death in Satpura village, Arwal District in Bihar state, Pastor Kumar said. A medical examination concluded that the attackers broke his arms before strangling him. They later tied a cloth around his neck and hung his body to portray it as a suicide, the pastor said.
“Our hearts are engulfed with grief at the kind of torture he went through before his last breath,” Pastor Kumar said.
Manohar Sharma, suspected along with accomplices of the murder, has been arrested and investigations are underway. He had fought with Nilesh Kumar two years prior for daring as a lower-caste Christian to object to the higher-caste Hindu crossing his yard where cow dung had just been spread according to local practice, the pastor said.
After finding his son’s body, Pastor Kumar and his wife Ravita Devi wept and wailed so much that day that they lost consciousness by evening, a fellow pastor said.
“Their condition was so bad that we had to call for an ambulance and send them to the district hospital,” said Pastor Pintoo Kumar, adding that their condition was so severe that a doctor decided to hospitalize them.
He and other Christians arranged a burial service on the night of July 8. The grieving parents were discharged from the hospital on July 10.
Nilesh Kumar was sleeping alone when he was attacked and killed, his father said. As the family had no mobile phone signal at their house, Nilesh Kumar would sleep at a distance in a veranda where there was a signal.
The family last saw him at 8 p.m. on July 7 at dinner. The time of death was estimated at about midnight.
Police registered a First Information Report for murder against Sharma and accomplices, omitting any religious motive, though Pastor Kumar said rage over Nilesh Kumar’s faith was a factor. The family was the first to convert from Hinduism in the village 22 years ago.
Two years ago, Nilesh Kumar had objected to Sharma crossing over their yard that his mother had freshly smeared with cow dung, the pastor said.
Reviling him for being of a lower caste and for accepting Christ, Sharma rebuked him for talking to him with such impudence, Pastor Kumar said. Since then, Sharma and his Hindu friends had threatened the Kumar family, leading to Sadar police arresting and jailing Sharma on Pastor Kumar’s complaint that he regularly threatened to kill his son.
Sharma had been released on bail after one month, and the case was still pending, the pastor said. Since then, Sharma never missed an opportunity to threaten Nilesh Kumar, though the Christian believed his desire for revenge had subsided, Pastor Kumar said.
“Nilesh had gotten used to it,” he said. “He was growing into a responsible Christian. He had just returned from a youth camp and was very excited about it. We could have never imagined that for a trivial matter as such, and two years later, Manohar would kill our son for revenge.”
Pastor Kumar said that if they were still Hindus, the entire village would have intervened in the squabble of two years ago and asked Sharma to stop overreacting.
“Nobody intervened for us; our lives do not matter to the Hindus,” he said, in tears.
His son faced scorn, ostracism and intentional targeting since childhood for being a Christian.
“The boys of the village teased him by addressing him, ‘Hey hallelujah, come here,’” Pastor Kumar said, describing opposition that his entire family faced. “We became vulnerable targets. The villagers knew that we were in the minority; we had no one to stand with us.”
Pastor Kumar has agricultural land and livestock to sustain the family. There are four other Christian families in the village, and they attend his church.
Nilesh Kumar is also survived by two sisters, ages 12 and 17.
“But our lives will never be the same without Nilesh,” said Kumar requesting prayer. “He is gone too soon, and we did not get to say our last goodbye.”
India ranked 11th on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2024 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 Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.
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 in several parts of the country to attack Christians since Modi took power in May 2014, religious rights advocates say.
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