Hindu nationalist groups objected to the gathering and complained to police, who moved in and filed a chargesheet against Devnoor that same day. The charge cited a law called the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Act, 2026. There was one problem: that law was not due to take effect until the end of August. Officers had booked a man under a statute that, at the moment of his arrest, did not yet exist as enforceable law.
When the mistake surfaced, the anti-conversion charge was dropped and Devnoor was granted interim bail. But he remains barred from leaving India. Pune police say they are now examining him for possible immigration violations instead, arguing that his Overseas Citizen of India status lets him attend prayer meetings but does not authorize him to preach or deliver public religious remarks without separate government permission. Devnoor is affiliated with the Anglican Episcopal Church International, based in Manchester.
The episode has drawn concern from Christian advocacy groups abroad, who point out that a man came to worship with fellow believers at a church old enough to have marked 141 years of continuous ministry, and left it facing the machinery of a state that had to invent grounds to detain him, then improvise new ones once the first set collapsed.
Who gives a man leave to speak of Christ?
Here is the question buried under all the paperwork in Pune: who, exactly, has the authority to grant a man permission to preach the gospel? Not the local magistrate. Not the immigration office. Not a rickshaw driver with a suspicion. My friend, that permission was granted once, by the risen Christ Himself, on a mountain in Galilee, and no government since has had the standing to revoke it.
The apostles found this out early, and it cost them a night in jail. Peter and John had healed a lame man at the temple gate in the name of Jesus, and the rulers of Israel hauled them before the council and commanded them, under threat, to stop speaking of that name altogether. The apostles did not ask for a permit. They did not file an appeal. They gave an answer that has echoed down every century since, through every empire that has ever tried to license the truth:
"For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." (Acts 4:20)
That is not defiance for its own sake. It is a plain statement of fact. A man who has truly seen the risen Christ, who has been forgiven and changed by Him, cannot help but speak of it, any more than a man pulled from a burning house can help but shout a warning to his neighbors. No bureaucrat drew up the paperwork for that. No office issues the license. The command came from heaven, and the apostles told the council so, plainly, when they said, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).
Understand something about the men in Pune who filed that chargesheet, and the rickshaw driver who set it all in motion. They are not villains in some grand story. They are ordinary men, frightened of a message they do not understand, reaching for whatever law is nearest to hand to make it stop. That fear is old. It stood outside the tomb on Easter morning with a detachment of soldiers, and it will stand at the door of every generation that hears the name of Jesus preached with power.
But no government has ever succeeded in outlawing what it cannot first define. The gospel is not a political platform to be regulated. It is news — the plainest news there is — that a Man died for sinners and rose again on the third day, and that whosoever calls upon His name will be saved. You cannot revoke a resurrection. You cannot deport an empty tomb. Pankaj Devnoor may yet answer to a magistrate over his travel papers, but the message he carried to that anniversary service needs no visa, no permit, and no government's blessing. It asks only for a hearing, and a heart willing to receive it.