Pastor Dia Moodley has been cleared.

After more than four months of criminal investigation, Avon and Somerset Police have confirmed that no further action will be taken against the 58-year-old Bristol street preacher, who was arrested last November for peacefully sharing his Christian faith in the public square.

HRLA welcomes the outcome. It is the right result and, notably, not the first time police have been forced to reach it.

This was the second occasion on which Avon and Somerset Police had arrested Pastor Moodley for commenting on Islam and transgender ideology while street preaching. On the first, in March 2024, they also dropped the investigation.

Pastor Moodley was preaching in Broadmead on November 22, 2025 when he was arrested on suspicion of inciting religious hatred and committing a religiously-aggravated public order offence.

He was held for eight hours, visited at his home by police, interrogated at the police station, and subjected to bail conditions that banned him from entering Bristol city centre – including over the Christmas period.

Those conditions were subsequently lifted following his representations to police, but their practical effect persisted. The ongoing investigation meant Pastor Moodley refrained from public preaching for months.

That is what the chilling effect looks like in practice: not a conviction, not even a formal charge, but the existence of an open investigation sufficient to silence a man of faith for months at a time.

And for everyone else, the fear that sharing their faith could lead to arrest and criminal investigation.

Pastor Moodley eventually resolved to preach on Easter Saturday, judging it his duty regardless of the risk of rearrest.

A Muslim bystander who objected to his remarks made a threat, captured on camera: “If you do that again bro, we’ll send the boys round.”

Police refused to investigate the threat, categorising it as merely “unpleasant” – a conclusion that sits uneasily alongside their willingness to arrest a preacher whose speech was, in the end, equally lawful.

The cases of Billboard Chris and Lyle Shelton illustrate the same dynamic in different institutional settings. Billboard Chris was censored online and has faced arrest in Australia and Europe – processes that ultimately lacked legal foundation, but which imposed real costs regardless.

Lyle Shelton is entering his seventh year of legal proceedings, defending a vilification claim for online comments criticising “drag queen storytime”. In the first instance he was exonerated, but his case is on appeal.

The pattern is consistent. The process is the punishment, even when no wrong was committed. People stay silent rather than risk legal action.

Pastor Moodley is now consulting with his legal team, ADF International, about action against Avon and Somerset Police for the violation of his rights.

A win at the investigation stage is welcome. Accountability for the conduct of the investigation itself would be better still.