A group of Hindu men entered the church premises on August 7 and accused organizers of using the gathering to lure converts. Officers built the chargesheet around the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Act, 2026 — a law that had not yet come into force. It is not scheduled to take effect until August 28. When the error surfaced, police began looking for other provisions to press the case forward rather than drop it.
Devnoor was not arrested. A local court granted him interim bail and stated there was no indication the anniversary program had been organized to convert anyone from another faith. Even so, the bail terms are heavy: he cannot leave India without the court's permission, and he must report to a police station three times a week — Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. His case returns to court on August 25. Deputy Commissioner of Police Prashant Amrutkar told reporters simply, "The law will take its course." Supporters overseas have raised more than £6,600 toward a £10,000 legal defense fund as the case drags on.
A charge built on a law that didn't exist yet
Sit with that for a moment. A man stood accused, and processed through bail hearings and police check-ins, under a statute that legally did not exist on the day he was accused of breaking it. That is not a footnote. That is the whole story. When the state wants to silence a voice, it does not always wait for the paperwork to catch up.
This is what it costs, in some corners of the world, to sing a hymn or read a psalm out loud with the door open. Pankaj Devnoor did not smuggle anything across a border. He did not incite a riot. He attended a church's anniversary week and, by the account of the very court that freed him, gave no indication of trying to convert anybody. What drew the law's attention was the sound of the gospel carrying past the walls of a building where Christians had gathered to worship.
My friend, that is an old story dressed in new legal language. The names change — Rome, then a colonial magistrate, now a state assembly in Maharashtra — but the instinct is the same: silence the name of Jesus by making it a legal liability to say it out loud. Scripture never promised believers immunity from this. It promised the opposite.
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Timothy 3:12)
Notice that word "shall." Not might. Not could, if things go badly. Paul wrote it as a certainty to a young preacher named Timothy, and it has held true in every century since, including this one, including this week, including a courtroom in Pune. The world does not object to religion in general. It objects to a Savior who claims the whole of a man's allegiance, because that claim unsettles every other claim the world wants to make on him.
And yet the Lord never told His people to go quiet when the pressure came. He told them the opposite:
"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." (Matthew 5:11)
Blessed. Not cursed, not forsaken, not forgotten — blessed. That is not a sentiment for a greeting card. It is a promise for a man reporting to a police station three days a week because he preached Christ crucified and risen. The reward is not in this world's courtroom. It never was.
If you have never once been laughed at, doubted, or inconvenienced for naming the name of Jesus, ask yourself honestly whether you have named Him loudly enough for anyone to notice. The gospel that costs nothing has likely been softened into something less than the gospel. The real thing — Christ crucified for sinners, risen from a real grave, coming again to judge the living and the dead — has always drawn opposition, because it has always drawn hearts away from lesser gods, lesser laws, and lesser loyalties. Devnoor's court date is a small, local echo of a much older courtroom, the one where a Man stood before Pilate and told the truth anyway. That Man is still worth standing for.
Sources: - [British Indian Church Leader Caught in India's Anti-Conversion Law Row](https://www.easterneye.biz/british-indian-church-leader-anti-conversion-law/) - [How a Manchester priest is facing charges in India under a law that's not yet in force](https://sg.news.yahoo.com/manchester-priest-charged-india-under-122904108.html) - [UK Pastor Booked on Bizarre Charges - International Christian Concern](https://persecution.org/2026/08/24/uk-pastor-booked-on-bizarre-charges/)