A pharmacist from a deeply devout family and a nurse who spent several years in North India — these were the two nuns from the Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Church who were arrested following allegations of religious conversion and human trafficking in Chhattisgarh earlier this week.Preethi Mary and Vandana Francis, as well as a man identified as Sukaman Mandavi, were arrested by the Government Railway Police at Chhattisgarh’s Durg Railway Station on Tuesday. According to an FIR registered on the basis of a complaint by a local man, they allegedly forcefully converted three women and trafficked them from Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district. However, the families of the three women have denied claims that they were trafficked.The arrest of the nuns has since snowballed into a major political flashpoint.The nuns belong to the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate (Green Gardens), headquartered at Cherthala in Alappuzha. While Preethi is originally from Elavoor in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, Vandana is from Udayagiri village in Kannur.Both nuns have siblings in the Church — Vandana’s sister is a nun in the same congregation and her brother is a Catholic priest abroad. Preethi’s sister, too, is a nun.Nithya Francis, the Bhopal-based Madhya Pradesh provincial general of Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate, told The Indian Express that the congregation had never faced this before. Preethi is diabetic, and Nithya met her in jail to ensure she had her medicines.The three women had been heading to Agra to work at a convent there, and the nuns had gone to receive them at the Durg Railway station, Nithya said. “A woman who had earlier worked at our convent had suggested that the women take up employment there. They were eager to get a job, and it was only with the permission of their parents that we offered them the job,” she said.Story continues below this adAlthough she had been working in the north for years, Preethi had “never faced anything like this before”, her sister-in-law Raiji Sijo said. “However, during a recent visit, she told us that the situation was changing and that they cannot freely move outside in their habit,” she said.The FIR in the case books all three suspects — the two nuns and the man — under the Chhattisgarh Religious Freedom Act and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.The arrests and the case have drawn protests. On Tuesday, Christian organisations from Durg, Bhilai and Raipur gathered at a local court during a bail hearing of the three suspects to protest the arrest.“Some people are trying to give it a political colour, but we all just want to ensure they are out of jail as soon as possible,” Nitin Lawrence, a Christian leader and the secretary of the Diocese of Chhattisgarh, told The Indian Express at the court.Story continues below this adAccording to the suspects’ lawyer Tamaskar Tondon, the arrests were made “without a preliminary inquiry”.“The FIR registered by the Government Railway Police (GRP) in Durg is based on a mere suspicion. The three women were all adults, and their family had consented to their going away for work,” Tandon said, alleging that the arrests were “done under pressure”.Christian organisations have alleged that the suspects were assaulted by right-wing groups while in police custody. Some videos, purportedly of the attack, show mobs barging into the Durg GRP police station, where the suspects had been detained.Annie Peter, a Congress leader from Durg, said she had reached the police station soon after she learnt about the detention on Tuesday. “There were a lot of people that morning. In the evening, we learnt that an FIR had been registered. I asked them to allow me to meet the two nuns. They were unable to speak,” she said.Story continues below this adArun Pannalal, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, said they would register a police complaint “against the people who are seen screaming, threatening and intimidating the nuns and the victims (in the videos)”.Families of the three women who were allegedly trafficked also denied these allegations.“My sister was going with them to get a job. I was the one who sent her because I trust them. I have worked for them in the past in Lucknow, and so I know it’s a good job,” the sister of one of these women said.The issue has become a major political flashpoint, not only in Chhattisgarh, but also in Kerala and Delhi, where MPs from Kerala’s ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) held separate protests outside Parliament on Tuesday.Story continues below this adFormer Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel of the Congress said the arrests were part of “the politics of polarisation”.“Our party’s general secretary has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister, and we also raised the issue in Lok Sabha. In the whole country, minorities are unsafe. In whichever states the BJP is in power, they target the minorities there for the sake of votes,” Baghel said in a post on X.On Wednesday, a delegation of leaders from Kerala’s Congress-led United Democratic Front also visited the nuns at Durg central jail. The delegation included MPs Benny Behanan of the Congress, N K Premachandran of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and K Francis George of Kerala Congress.“We had a long discussion with the nuns. They (nuns) are innocent and had gone just to receive the three women at the railway station,” Premachandran told reporters after the meeting.Story continues below this adThe nuns and the arrested man remain in jail, while the three women alleged to have been trafficked have been sent to a shelter home.On their part, the GRP has refused to comment, with one officer saying only that the court “will take appropriate action”.