MUMBAI – At a program in the city of Bhopal, India, to mark International Women’s Day, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said his government would make a provision for death penalty for religious conversion of girls.

On March 8, Yadav said the government is making changes to the existing conversion law.

He said that the provision of death penalty for the religious conversion of girls will be made along the same lines as the punishment for raping minors.

“The government is very strict against those who rape innocent daughters. A provision for the death penalty has been made in this regard as our government is not going to spare those who rape girls by force or by luring. We don’t want to give them a chance to live at any cost. Besides this, a provision for capital punishment is also being made under the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act for those who religiously convert [girls],” Yadav said, according to The Hindu.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling party, runs the state government in Madhya Pradesh. There are few Christians in the state: Less than 0.3 percent, as opposed to the national average of 2.3 percent.

Since the BJP took power in the national government in 2014, incidents of harassment against Christians and other minorities have increased across the country.

Hindu nationalists often accuse Muslims and Christians of targeting marginalized low caste and Tribal Hindus to convert through illicit means, such as offering them food or money.

Several states have already passed anti-conversion laws, which impose fines and jail terms for anyone convicted of a “forced conversion.”

Later in the evening of March 8, the Madhya Pradesh state government issued a statement saying that strict action would be taken against those who “forcefully or by luring people to marry or convert their religion.”

“Chief Minister Dr. Yadav said that the government will take the strictest steps against those who misbehave with girls, women and daughters. The culprits will be given death penalty. No culprit will be spared under any circumstances. Religious Freedom Act is in force in Madhya Pradesh to take strict action against those who forcefully or by luring people to marry or convert their religion,” the government statement said.

Father Babu Joseph, the former spokesperson of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), said the statement by the state minister was “preposterous.”

“That a chief minister of a state, whose professed duty is to protect the fundamental human rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution, should indulge in such rabble rousing is akin to demeaning his office,” he told Crux.

“Additionally in the twenty-first century, when nation after nation is trying to do away with capital punishment even for serious crimes, here we have someone toying with the idea of introducing it for exercising one’s conscience,” the priest said.

“Religious belief in any civilized society has always been considered to belong to the personal realm and the state has no reason to interfere with it. However, it has become a trend in some states in India to take push the personal religious matter into the political center stage thereby creating social unease,” Joseph told Crux.