"On Diwali every year my father bought a lottery ticket and prayed to the Goddess Lakshmi but he never hit the jackpot. And then one day, four boys were beating me up and I prayed to Lord Krishna for help, but he didn't come to my rescue," he says.

Sitting at his two-room home in Tohana, about 250km (155 miles) from the capital, Delhi, he shows me his "most prized possession" - a certificate that says he belongs to "no caste, no religion and no God".

Issued on 29 April on a Haryana government letterhead, it is signed by a local Tohana official.