Surviving son seeks justice amid historic levels of violence against Christians.
There is a rising trend in violence against Christians in India
The surviving son of a fatal attack on a Christian convert family in eastern India is demanding a state-level investigation into the murder of his mother, father and sister.
While local police have taken on the case as a land dispute, CSI has learned the attack was preceded by pointed threats against the family over their conversion. And it comes amid historic levels of violence against Christians.
A “land dispute” was the version presented by the surviving eldest daughter, who did not convert to Christianity and had previously married and moved out of her parent’s household.
But according to the surviving son, who was away at university at the time of the attack, the killing was motivated strictly by his family’s abandonment of their indigenous religion.
Today, he and other local Christian community members in the eastern province of Odisha are pressing for the investigation to be transferred to the state level, insisting that any fair investigation must consider a religious motive in the killings.
The victims Jitendra Soren, 45, his wife Malati Soren, 35, and their 15-year-old daughter Sasmita Soren had attended Sunday morning church service on January 25, the day they would be killed for their faith.
They had accepted Christianity just seven months prior, when Jitendra recovered from a prolonged illness following prayer by a pastor.
They had returned to their home in the village of Nialijharan in Keonjhar district of India’s coastal Odisha province in the early afternoon and were relaxing following lunch, when assailants entered their home wielding bamboo sticks and an axe.
Not long before that fateful afternoon, Jitendra Soren had prayed for the sick daughter of one of his relatives, after which she experienced healing. Provoked by Hindu nationalists, the relative subsequently alleged that Jitendra had practiced witchcraft. Today, that relative is suspected in Jitendra’s murder.
Authorities have thus far arrested three suspects, identified as Baidyanath Soren, his son Sudam Soren and the slain Jitendra’s younger brother Laxman Soren.
CSI has learned from sources on the ground the police are not examining a religious motive in the killings. The victims’ eldest daughter, Pana Soren, who is married and not a Christian, filed a police complaint stating that the killings resulted from a dispute over family land.
But their surviving 17-year-old son Sugdha Soren, who is studying at a school in the capital city of Bhubaneswar, said relatives frequently objected to the family’s religious practice, including attending church every Sunday, and even issued a death threat prior to the murders.
According to Sugdha, earlier disputes over land had always been resolved peacefully by local residents.
Sugdha has submitted an application to the Keonjhar district’s police chief urging that the investigation be transferred to an independent federal agency, insisting that the police complaint did not reflect what he described as the full background of the incident.
A large number of local Christians have rallied around Sugdha and gathered at the family home following the murders to show solidarity with his demands.
The killings come at a time of increasing attacks on Christians, with reports emerging of Christian burial sites linked to tribal communities being opened and bodies removed by villagers influenced by Hindu nationalist groups. These exhumations are often justified with claims that Christian burials violate local customs or involve disputes over village burial land.
Keonjhar district has a large tribal population, and Christian converts from tribal communities have faced attacks for nearly a decade from Hindu nationalist groups seeking to draw tribal populations into the larger Hindu religious sphere through cultural campaigns, religious outreach and village-level mobilization. Many tribal communities in the region historically follow indigenous belief systems based on ancestor reverence, nature worship and local deities, traditions that developed separately from classical Hindu practice.
Tribal communities account for about 9 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion. Their votes draw strong attention from political parties because these communities have largely remained outside rigid ideological alignments, according to political analysts. Hindu nationalist groups have sought to consolidate this support by opposing religious conversions and by demanding that tribal people who adopt Christianity lose eligibility for affirmative action benefits reserved for certain tribes, political analysts say.
The triple murder occurred less than a month after the religious freedom monitoring group United Christian Forum reported another year of the highest level of violence against Christians recorded since India’s independence in 1947.
Data compiled by the group shows a steady rise in reported incidents in recent years. There were 486 cases in 2021, 601 in 2022, 734 in 2023 and 834 in 2024. The number rose to nearly 900 in 2025, though the annual report documenting attacks on Christians has yet to be released by faith-based groups tracking such incidents.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which has governed at the national level and in several major states, including Odisha, for more than a decade, faces accusations from critics that pressure on the Christian minority serves a political strategy aimed at consolidating Hindu voters and directing electoral debate toward religion and nationalism instead of governance and public accountability.
