India’s highest court has intervened in a dispute over Christian burials in the state of Chhattisgarh. Incidents involving Christian graves have also been reported in Jharkhand and Odisha as well as in neighbouring Sri Lanka and Bhutan.
In central India, a mob assaults Christians after a burial. screenshot from video recorded by a local Christian
India’s Supreme Court has ordered an immediate halt to the exhumation of Christian bodies in the central state of Chhattisgarh, following a series of gravedigging incidents that triggered legal action and national concern. Bodies of Christians, mostly from tribal communities, have been dug up by local villagers or mobs influenced by Hindu nationalist groups, who allege that Christian burials violate local customs or claims over village burial land.
The court issued the interim direction on 18 February, pending the final order, according to local media reports. The judges instructed authorities that “no further exhumation of buried bodies shall be permitted.”
The order arose from a public interest petition filed by the Chhattisgarh Association for Justice and Equality, a local Christian group which presented testimonies from affected families and supporters, including pastors, social activists and local residents.
According to one of the testimonies, Sunita, a 13-year-old Christian girl from Brehebeda area in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district, died of typhoid fever on November 2, 2025. After her body was brought home, villagers blocked the family from conducting Christian burial rites and insisted on traditional tribal rites. Her brother, Manupotai, said the family was told burial on village land would be allowed only if they abandoned Christianity. Sunita was eventually buried that evening about eight miles away, outside the village.
While Indian Christians hailed the Court’s decision, it is far from clear whether it will be respected. In January 2025, the Supreme Court gave the State of Chhattisgarh two months to create designated burial sites for Christians, but Christians in Chhattisgarh are still waiting for this order to be implemented.
Pattern of burial disputes
The petition argued that Christian families in several tribal, or indigenous, districts faced repeated interference during burial ceremonies and subsequent disturbance of graves. Court records linked to the petition documented 143 families who reported difficulty burying relatives within their own village limits, often requiring burial sites located several miles away from their homes.
Petitioners told the court that corpses in some instances were removed under pressure or in the presence of local officials and reburied at distant locations.
Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, representing the petitioners, informed the court that the incidents were part of a recurring pattern in Chhattisgarh, particularly in tribal areas. Chhattisgarh is governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
The petition told the court that burial grounds that had historically served all villagers were increasingly being treated as restricted spaces – off-limits to Christians. Although most Hindus in India practice cremation, Iin Chhattisgarh, many tribal communities traditionally bury their dead.
In January, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Nazila Ghanea, submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council on how religious freedom relates to funeral rights. In it, she reported that village councils in tribal areas are passing resolutions to block Christians “from burying their deceased in village graveyards alongside their ancestors” and that the police “stand by or enable such coercion”.
The United Christian Forum, a national interdenominational group, recorded at least 23 burial-related incidents during 2025, with the largest share occurring in Chhattisgarh. There have also been reports of Christian bodies being dug up in Odisha and Jharkhand states.
Concerns over tribal religious identity
Christians see political motives behind the increasing incidence of gravedigging. In India, certain minority ethnic groups are recognized by the government as “Scheduled Tribes,” and receive special protections. In several central and western Indian states, Hindu nationalist organizations have intensified efforts to draw tribal communities into the larger Hindu fold through cultural campaigns, religious outreach and village-level mobilisation.
Most tribal groups in the region historically practise indigenous belief systems centered on ancestor worship, nature reverence and local deities, traditions that developed independently of classical Hindu practice. Hindu nationalist groups have promoted Hindu rituals, reinterpreted tribal customs through a Hindu framework and encouraged community identification with majoritarian religious narratives. The same groups seek to exclude members of tribal communities who have converted to Christianity – including by excluding them from communal burial sites.
Similar incidents in Sri Lanka and Bhutan
Tensions around the funeral rights of minority Christians are not unique to India. Incidents have also been reported in India’s Buddhist-majority neighbours, Sri Lanka and Bhutan.
In Sri Lanka’s Puttalam district, Pastor Matthew of Jesus Lives Glorious Church lost his 19-year-old son in a road accident in 2023. The officials at the local public cemetery initially refused to let the grieving family bury their son there, according to a field account by CSI’s local partner at the time.
After public pressure, the officials allowed the burial. The pastor paid for the grave and received permission for a headstone, with instructions that only his son’s photograph could appear on it. However, noting that Buddhist gravestones carried religious inscriptions, the family chose to inscribe the Bible verse John 14:6 on the stone.
Two weeks later, local authorities instructed the pastor to remove the Bible verse, citing concerns about possible “social unrest”. Soon afterward, unidentified persons damaged the gravestone. The pastor said that officials were still trying to block him from entering the cemetery where his son is buried.
“I am fighting for our right because I want to achieve a solution for the future for all Christians,” he told CSI’s partner.
Bhutan presents a different structural challenge. Christians, estimated at about two percent of the population, lack formal legal recognition in this small Himalayan kingdom between India and China. In Bhutan, cremation is the dominant practice, and there is widespread opposition to burying bodies, since many Bhutanese view the country’s mountains as sacred. Christians must either bury their dead secretly in remote areas, or outside the country.
In some cases, vandals in Bhutan have reportedly dug up the bodies of deceased Christians and used their skulls and thigh bones in certain Buddhist ritual practices.
UN Rapporteur flags global concern
In her remarks to the UN Human Rights Council on 3 March, Nazila Ghanea, the special rapporteur for freedom of religion or belief, said that she “receives regular and harrowing reports of violations and infringements” of the funeral rights of religious minorities.
The Special Rapporteur stated that the way the dead are honoured forms an integral part of the freedom to practice and manifest religion or belief. “States should uphold funeral rights without discrimination,” she said. This includes “ensuring accountability” for “hate-motivated attacks and desecration of funeral sites.”
