New Delhi: The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has called upon the US government to urge officials in India to hold “perpetrators of targeted violence accountable, highlighting “violent attacks by Hindu nationalist mobs targeting Christians” and said that such attacks further justify its calls for India to be designated as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).The press statement comes months after its 2025 Annual Report, in which the USCIRF for the sixth time recommended that the US Department of State designate India as a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations. The State department has so far not acted on this recommendation. The Ministry of External Affairs had dismissed the report and claimed that the US body was continuing “its pattern of issuing biased and politically motivated assessments”.In its India-specific statement released on Friday (February 6), the USCIRF, which is a bipartisan US Congress-backed body, referred to the recent attack on a pastor in Odisha who was allegedly assaulted by a mob and paraded through the streets with a garland of footwear around his neck over suspicion of forced conversion. The USIRF said that such attacks “further justify” its calls to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).“The month of January alone has witnessed a spate of horrible attacks against Christians,” said Vicky Hartzler, USCIRF chair. “We are particularly concerned by the report of a Hindu mob beating Pastor Bipin Bihari Naik in Odisha as he was conducting Sunday prayers inside a house. The mob accused him of conducting forced conversions, dragged him outside and forced him to eat cow dung. Such attacks further justify USCIRF’s call for the U.S. Department of State to designate India a CPC.”In its statement, the USCIRF further said that the increasing attacks on Christian pastors “only add to increasing levels of destruction, harassment, and vandalism targeting religious minorities across India.”“In addition to the January attack against Pastor Naik, a Hindu nationalist mob demolished the homes of four Christian families in Maharashtra after they refused to renounce their faith. The same month, Hindu nationalists attacked a minibus of Evangelical Christians in Andhra Pradesh, setting fire to the vehicle and beating passengers with cricket bats and stones. In February, another Hindu mob in Chhattisgarh set fire to half a dozen Muslim homes after accusing a man of desecrating a Hindu temple,” it added. In November, the USCIRF in an India-specific statement had said that the ties between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are enabling “discriminatory” laws. It cited the case of Umar Khalid, who has been detained since 2020 for leading peaceful protests opposing the religiously discriminatory CAA, as an example of religious minorities spending years in jail without trial.