A mob of 20 men attacked a Protestant pastor in the eastern Indian state of Odisha (map) and forced him to eat cow dung and bow before a Hindu temple.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India condemned the attack and demanded “immediate action against the perpetrators and justice for the victim.”
Odisha, then known as Orissa, was the site of a 2008 anti-Christian pogrom in which an estimated 100 Christians were murdered, and 50,000 fled their homes.