The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the ministry of home affairs (MHA) to obtain data from seven states — Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand — on a PIL alleging the increasing number of attacks on Christian community members.

A bench of Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli, however, said it was “not expressing any opinion on the veracity of the allegations” raised in the PIL jointly filed by Dr Peter Machado, Archbishop of Bangalore Diocese, and two other organisations — National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India.

The apex court on Thursday asked the chief secretaries of the states concerned to furnish details relating to the number of FIRs registered in the respective states, the status of investigations, the number of persons arrested, the total number of chargesheets and the stage of the trial.

The MHA had been asked to collate this information provided by the states within two months and submit the overall status report before the court.While solicitor general Tushar Mehta appearing for the Centre questioned the petitioners saying the petition was filed with an “ulterior motive,” senior advocate Colin Gonzalves told the court that a total of 505 instances of attacks were reported in 2021 and 200 such incidents this year.

Ironically, he said instead of arresting the actual culprits, police in these states had arrested 510 pastors whereas only 23 perpetrators of the hate crimes have been arrested since last year.Mehta, however, strongly opposed the maintainability of the petition, saying “the petition is motivated based on self-serving articles” and if the court decides to entertain it would open Pandora’s box.He said the MHA had verified the contents of the PIL and found that they were false, exaggerated and filed with an oblique motive.The court, however, proceeded to seek factual data from the MHA.