Arun Pannalal, 76, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, was granted bail on Wednesday by the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur, as per reports received. He has not yet walked out of jail, and the conditions of the bail were not immediately known.
Pannalal has been in judicial custody, meaning he is held in jail on a court’s orders, since police arrested him at his home in Raipur, the state capital, late on 7 August.
The arrest followed a complaint by Amit Chimnani, a spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which governs Chhattisgarh. Chimnani alleged that Pannalal had written an objectionable comment about the Hindu god Shiva and the Shivling, an object Hindus worship as a symbol of the deity. The comment was allegedly posted under a Facebook post by Hansraj Goyal. Chimnani handed police screenshots and web links and said the remark had hurt the sentiments of Hindus.
Police booked both men under India’s criminal code, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The charges include promoting enmity between groups and deliberately hurting religious feelings. Police said they were trying to trace Goyal. No arrest of Goyal has been reported.
Members of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu nationalist group, protested outside Pannalal’s house that night under heavy police presence. On 8 August, a magistrate refused him bail and sent him to 14 days in judicial custody.
A sessions court in Raipur turned down another application on 24 August. It cited the seriousness of the allegations, the risk of religious tension and an investigation that was still under way. Its order recorded that investigators had found the alleged comment while examining a mobile phone. Lawyers from the BJP’s legal wing opposed bail in court.
Pannalal’s lawyers say that an account in his name does not prove he wrote the comment. His son, Vaibhav Pannalal, believes his father’s identity may have been misused online.
The High Court rejected a bail application in late September, with liberty to file afresh after two weeks. A bail hearing was held there on 13 October.
Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai commented on the case soon after the arrest. Activists said he called the alleged remarks objectionable to Sanatan Dharma, a term many Hindus use for Hinduism. They criticised the comment, noting that no court had yet examined the matter.
On 9 August, a group of activists, among them journalist John Dayal and Father Cedric Prakash, demanded Pannalal’s release. They called the arrest an attempt to silence a minority-rights voice and said “governing a state is not the same as running a vendetta.”
Pannalal is a frequent critic of anti-conversion laws, which restrict religious conversion. His arrest came within days of a stricter law of this kind, the Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religion Bill, 2026, taking effect in August. Bishop Paul Toppo of Raigarh said the law had left Christians and their leaders exposed to anti-Christian elements. Christians make up less than 2 percent of the state’s roughly 30 million people.
According to a YouTube channel Pannalal uses, the Forum has worked since 1999 against the persecution of Christians. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom lists him in its victims database, describing him as “detained for his religious expression.”
A bail order is not an acquittal, and the case continues. Supporters have asked for prayers for him until he is freed.
