Church people in central India have condemned apparent harassment of Christian students by Hindu hardliners.

Some 40 students from Orissa state were returning to their school in Indore on June 28 after summer vacation when members of the Dharam Rakshak Samiti (religion protection council) stopped their bus on the road, said Peter Masih and Abhijeet Masih, who were accompanying the children.

They questioned the children, all of them Christians aged five to 12, for three hours and took them to a police station.

The Hindus wanted the police to register a case of attempted forcible religious conversion of the children. However, this was not done as the accusers failed to produce any evidence, a senior police official said.

The police then allowed the children to proceed to their hostel.

Madhya Pradesh state, ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, has a law that prohibits religious conversion without the state’s knowledge.

The children, some 20 of them from Kandhamal district in Orissa, which witnessed anti-Christian riots in 2008, have been students of a private school in Indore for the past year.

A Protestant NGO, Youth With A Mission, supports their education and accommodation.

Christian leaders have condemned the incident.

“It is shocking that poor children were needlessly harassed for such a long time,” said Indore diocesan spokesperson Father Cherian Pulickal. He said he wanted the administration to act on the incident.

These children were born of Christian parents and “were harassed for no reason,” said Sylvester Gangle, an official of the Madhya Pradesh Isai Mahasangh (Christian forum). He demanded the arrest of the Hindu hardliners.

One of the students, Sagri Kadria Singh, 11, said she did not know “why we were stopped and harassed” and was “frightened” by the incident.

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