India, Dec. 29 -- On December 15, 2025, in Kanker district, Chhattisgarh, a province in the central part of India, the father of Rajman Salam, an elected sarpanch (village headman), was buried according to Christian rites on the family's farmland. This is the traditional way of burying the dead in the area. Soon thereafter, a large mob allegedly incited villagers with a claim that under the PESA Act, they had a right to exhume the body. The mob asserted the land belonged to a local deity, and that a Christian burial was impermissible.

In November 2022, in the same region, an elderly Christian woman, Chaitibai, in Krutola village, Chhattisgarh, was denied burial space by village authorities, forcing her son to use family land. The family ...