BHANDARDIGI, India — Three related Christian families in a village in central India have decided to leave their ancestral home rather than renounce Jesus Christ, after weeks of pressure, a mob beating, and demands from village leaders and local officials that they return to Hinduism, according to Morning Star News.

The families — 18 people in all — live in Bhandardigi village, in the Durgukondal Block of Chhattisgarh state’s Kanker District. They are the last remaining Christians in the village, Morning Star News reports, and they have followed Jesus for about ten years.

The pressure built through September. According to the report, a mob disrupted the Christians’ worship gathering on three consecutive Sundays beginning September 6, and the families were summoned six times before the village head and council between September 13 and 20. Each time, they were threatened with beatings, ostracism, and expulsion unless they renounced Christ. Their monthly subsidized government ration of rice, wheat, cooking oil, and other staples was also cut off, 24-year-old Vikas Salam told Morning Star News.

On September 20, a mob again disrupted their worship service and pressed them to renounce their faith. The next day, according to Salam’s account, about 150 people armed with wooden sticks attacked the three families without warning, beating women, children, men, and the elderly. Four people — Salam, his uncle Somji Nureti, his cousin Pradeep Uike, and 11-year-old Rohan Nureti — were hospitalized with injuries including ear, back, and throat wounds. Salam said he escaped briefly to call police, and officers came only after he telephoned the district superintendent of police. He said police took no action against the attackers, and village elders told officers the Christians had only been slapped a few times.

When the Christians returned from the hospital, they found their belongings thrown onto the road and were ordered to leave the village, the report says. A delegation of village and local officials — including the village head, police officers, revenue and land officers, and magistrates — then gathered and pressed the families to give up their faith, Salam said. According to his account, the officials warned them their farmland would be confiscated, putting the choice to them bluntly: land or Jesus Christ.

Under that pressure, Salam’s father, 50-year-old Ram Salam, and the representatives of the other two households agreed on behalf of their families to convert to Hinduism, saying they had to save themselves, their land, and their property. The villagers also demanded a religious offering, which the families gave, according to the report. But Vikas Salam refused to comply, telling Morning Star News that if the families had been willing to renounce Christ, there would have been no need for high officials to come and pressure them.

Salam said the families had once lived a life of drinking, fighting, and arguments, but their lives changed when they began to follow Christ — first through physical healing, and then, as they read the Bible, through the promise of eternal life. “We will not deny Christ, because since the day we started to believe, our lives have changed,” he told Morning Star News.

Until they are able to leave, the family remains in the village under constant threat, the report says, with villagers waiting for compliance from Salam and his household. Salam said the family has decided to leave its land, property, home, and ancestral village for a far-off city, where they can freely attend church and worship Jesus, even if they must work as daily wage laborers. India ranked 12th on Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.