A prayer meeting run by a Pentecostal church in India has been shut down this week after it had been running for four months. 

Pastor Allen Gobi leads a church called Family of Jesus in the Tiruppur District in the state of Tamil Nadu. 

Gobi told Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) that as the prayer meeting on March 24 was about to begin 10 police officers arrived. He says that the officers told him Christians did not have permission to conduct services in the location and refused to allow the service to continue.

CSW says that Gobi "was eventually escorted to the police station, where he was forced to sign a written admission that he had no permission to conduct prayer meetings in the property. Tamil Nadu has witnessed an unprecedented surge of targeted attacks by local Hindu hardline groups where prayer meetings are the object of arbitrary scrutiny by the police."

Read more: Severe persecution, death for new Christian in India

Nehemiah Christie is the Director of Legislation & Regulations of the Synod of Pentecostal Churches in Tamil Nadu. “It is sad to see police officers whose duty is to uphold the Indian Constitution acting in a biased and discriminatory way. Their failure to uphold the rule of law emboldens the local fringe groups to target the Christian’s right to worship," they said.

"We are shocked to hear that this is happening in a state which has traditionally been tolerant of religious minorities. There were 29 incidents in the first 31 days of 2019. The Indian government must take serious measures to address police conduct and objectivity so as not to erode the confidence by the minority community, especially Christians.”