Bharathiya Janata Party (BJP) Kerala State president Rajeev Chandrasekhar has ought to distance the party in Kerala from the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu right-wing organisation suspected of mobbing two Keralite nuns at the Durg railway station in Chhattisgarh last Friday and allegedly browbeating the local law enforcement into arresting the nuns on “questionable charges” of attempting to spirit away three local women, including a tribal community member, to Agra for “forced” conversion to Christianity.
Mr. Chandrasekhar told reporters in New Delhi on Tuesday (July 29, 2025) that Sisters Preeta Mary and Vandana Francis of the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate (ASMI) order, hailing from Kannur and Angamaly, respectively, in Kerala, were “not human traffickers or proselytisers” as accused by Bajrang Dal activists in Chhattisgarh. He said the Bajrang Dal did not bear the BJP’s imprimatur and was an independent organisation.
Delegations of LDF, UDF head to Chhattisgarh to champion cause of arrested Keralite nuns
Mr. Chandrasekhar’s denouncement of the arrests came after the BJP in Kerala came under severe criticism from Church leaders as well as the ruling front and the Opposition. The arrests also arguably threatened to derail the BJP’s political programme in Kerala, which aimed to woo the electorally significant Christian community to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fold ahead of the local body polls later this year and the Assembly elections in 2026.
