On 28th March 2025, the POCSO Court in Mohali found controversial Christian preacher Pastor Bajinder Singh guilty of offences under the POCSO Act in a sexual harassment case from 2018. While five accused were acquitted due to lack of evidence, Bajinder and another accused have been found guilty. The court will pronounce judgment on 1st April 2025. Pastor Bajinder Singh is the founder of the Church of Glory and Wisdom and is accused of coercing people to convert to Christianity on pretext of miraclous healing and more.
Bajinder was arrested by the police in 2018 at Delhi Airport while he was trying to board a flight to London. The sexual harassment and rape case against him was filed by a woman in Zirakpur, SAS Nagar (Mohali) district of Punjab.
While the sentencing and judgment documents are still awaited, OpIndia accessed details of the complaint filed by the woman against Bajinder.
The FIR against Bajinder was filed on 20th April 2018 under Sections 276, 420, 254, 294, 323, 506, 147 and 149 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 of the IT Act, 2000 at Zirakpur police station.
According to the complaint filed against Bajinder, the victim came in contact with the preacher in 2016 during prayer meetings. During those meetings, Bajinder took the contact information of the victim.
In September 2017, he called the victim to meet at a dhaba and asked her to bring her passport. When she went to meet him, Bajinder was sitting with another accused in the case, Sandeep Pehalwan, in a car. Bajinder asked the victim to sit in the vehicle and took her to a house in Chandigarh.
During the conversation, Bajinder told the victim that he was going to the UK for some days and wanted her to accompany him. He developed a physical relationship with her on the pretext of taking her abroad, without her consent. After that, Bajinder allegedly called her several times to the dhaba where they had met for the first time and took her to the same house to forcibly develop physical relations with her.
She also accused Bajinder of spiking her tea and forcefully developing physical relations with her while she was unconscious. She further accused Bajinder of making an obscene video of her.
One day, he demanded lakhs of rupees from her for going abroad. When the victim expressed her inability to pay, he threatened to make her obscene video viral.
The complaint further added that under constrained circumstances, the victim had introduced another person to Bajinder on the pretext of sending him abroad. The person that the victim had brought to Bajinder allegedly paid him in her presence. However, Bajinder neither sent the victim nor the second person abroad. Later, the person demanded the money back from the victim as she had introduced him to the preacher.
The victim went to meet Bajinder at his place in Chhat village to resolve the matter. However, during the meeting, Bajinder and his henchmen Jatinder Pastor, Akbar Pastor, Sattar Ali, Sucha Singh, Rajesh Chaudhary and Sandeep Pehalwan allegedly abused and beat up the victim. She further stated that they outraged her modesty and issued death threats if she disclosed the incident to anyone.
While the District Court had rejected the bail applications of the accused in the case, Pastor Bajinder Singh and others secured bail from the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Sentencing in the case is scheduled to be announced on 1st April 2025.
