Using an axe and stones, a villager in India who practiced a tribal religion brutally murdered his 32-year-old niece last week.

The motive behind this gruesome act was the belief that she and her relatives lost their rights to ancestral farmland after embracing Christianity, according to sources.

In Dantewada District, Chhattisgarh State, Bindu Sodi of Toylanka village was the sole breadwinner for her mother, sister, younger brother, wife, and their 2-year-old child.

The surviving family members cannot go back home because of threats to their lives.

In the weeks leading up to the killing, Bindu Sodi’s uncle and cousin encroached on her younger brother’s land, planting seeds on a portion of it.

According to the pastor, Bhima Sodi approached the Katekalyan police after receiving advice from Christian pastor Sudru Ram Telam to complain about the land takeover. The station chief then directed him to resolve the issue with the revenue department and village registrar.

Pastor Telam said the revenue department officer summoned Chetu Sodi, but he refused. The officer then ordered the village registrar to visit Chetu Sodi’s house to check the claim and determine the rightful owner.

Bindu’s younger sister, Aarti Mandavi, said the registrar faced opposition from Chetu Sodi.

Mandavi, a Christian who had been living with Bindu for the past year, recounted that her uncle informed the registrar that they had forfeited their claim to the ancestral property because of their conversion to Christianity, resulting in his refusal to sign the documents.

Mandavi reported that the revenue officer directed a notice to be served to Chetu Sodi, instructing them to either go to the collectorate office or face action because of non-compliance.

Pastor Telam declared that Chetu Sodi and his son had started cultivation on another portion of Bhima Sodi’s land, but preventing them now was futile. “Bhima and the entire family were very disturbed at how things were going. Bhima had no job; he took care of the farmland.

They were not sure how long the revenue department proceedings would take.”

On the evening of June 24, Pastor Telam said Bhima Sodi, his wife Tulsi, Bindu Sodi, and her mother cultivated the only portion of their remaining land before the uncle took it over. Someone saw them working their land and informed Chetu Sodi, who quickly arrived with his son.

Bindu Sodi recorded her uncle picking up stones and charging them with her mobile phone. Bhima Sodi and his mother hastily drove away from the field on the tractor, while Bindu Sodi and Tulsi Sodi fled on foot.

“While running, Bindu toppled over something and fell,” Mandavi told Morning Star News. “The mobile got thrown at a distance, and Tulsi turned and picked up the phone and approached to help Bindu, but the uncle and his son reached Bindu and began to assault her.”

Tulsi Sodi ran to hand the phone to Bhima Sodi, who called the police. Nevertheless, the station chief stated that darkness was descending and they would only arrive the next day, Mandavi reported.

“Bhima called a Tribal Christian Forum, and their head in turn called the police station in charge and insisted on them to go, explaining that the matter was serious,” Pastor Telam said.

By the time police arrived with an ambulance, Mandavi said, “the field was wet with Bindu’s blood.”

Chetu Sodi and his son assaulted Bindu Sodi, striking her with stones and an axe besides beating and kicking her, witnesses said. He and his son left her half dead and went after Bhima Sodi and his mother, Mandavi said.

“Bhima and mother hid themselves in someone’s house to save their lives,” she said. “When Uncle couldn’t find them, they went back and once again started to assault Bindu until she was dead.”

Mandavi said she was shocked at the brutality of the assault, which left Bindu Sodi with wounds on her face, head, and neck.

“Some parts of her flesh from the cheeks were missing,” Mandavi said, sobbing. They brutally assaulted her until she bled to death on the field after repeatedly hitting her with the axe and smashing her face with stones.

The police took her body to Dantewada for a postmortem, and the family accompanied them. The next day, the police arrested Chetu Sodi. Officers arrested his son, Kumma Sodi, on June 29.

Police have registered First Information Report No. 30/2024 for murder (Section 302) and criminal acts by several persons with common intention (Section 34) against Chetu Sodi and Kumma Sodi.

A human rights activist in Delhi who requested anonymity said he called the police on June 26 and learned about the FIR. Still, when he mentioned that there was opposition to Bindu Sodi’s Christian faith, “the officer responded by saying that the accused and victim are from the same family and they had a dispute over the land.”

Pastor Telam refuted the police’s claim, saying if the motives were only a family land dispute, then “why did the police not let us bury Bindu in the village? Why did they want to avoid any sectarian tension by allowing her a Christian burial inside the village? There is no dubiousness about the Christian persecution angle behind the murder.”

Police Pressure

After the burial on June 26, Pastor Telam told Morning Star News that police pressured the family to bury Bindu’s body 19 miles from her native village.

“Sadly, the police did not take a stand for us or give us police protection to conduct the burial in their homeland,” said Pastor Telam. Bindu’s body was swiftly transported from the mortuary to the Dantewada burial site, ensuring a timely evening burial.

According to him, officers allegedly threatened to arrest him after he protested against the police’s refusal to honor the family’s request for a village burial.

“He mentioned the police threatened a four- to five-hour jail term if he persisted in supporting the family’s demand for a village burial.”

“They said that I poisoned the minds of the family members to conduct the burial in the village, and that is why the family is becoming stubborn about it.”

According to Mandavi, the villagers, who are desperate to keep Kumma Sodi out of jail, have been threatening Bhima Sodi and his family with death most of the time. She mentioned that villagers had predicted Kumma Sodi would take the life of another family member if law enforcement continued their pursuit before his arrest.

Mandavi, speaking from the family’s rented room outside the village, 20 miles away, expressed their fear of returning.

According to the pastor, Bindu Sodi is the only family member who makes money. Mandavi said that her sister had taken over providing for the family after their father’s death and “never married because she had to feed so many members.”

Bindu Sodi had taken a job as a teacher at the village’s government-sponsored child and mother care center under the Integrated Child Development Scheme.

She was the first person from the Toylanka village to accept Christ, Pastor Telam said.

“It is because of her evangelism that eight more families in that village came to Christ,” he said. “She was a great evangelist at our church.”

India ranked 11th on the Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the countries where it is most challenging to be a Christian. The country was 31st in 2013, but its position worsened after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.

Since Modi took office in May 2014, religious rights advocates claim that the National Democratic Alliance government’s hostile rhetoric toward non-Hindus has given Hindu extremists the confidence to attack Christians in various parts of the nation.