Court in India Convicts Legislator in Second Murder Case

Manoj Pradhan arrested; three more cases pending against Hindu nationalist.

NEW DELHI, September 10 (CDN) — A Hindu nationalist legislator was arrested yesterday after a court pronounced him guilty of playing a major role in the murder of a Christian during anti-Christian carnage in Orissa state’s Kandhamal district in August 2008.

The Fast Track Court II in Kandhamal convicted Manoj Pradhan of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the murder of a 30-year-old Christian, Bikram Nayak, who succumbed to head injuries two days after an attack by a mob in the Raikia area of Budedi village on Aug. 25, 2008.

Judge Chitta Ranjan Das sentenced Pradhan to six years of rigorous imprisonment for “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code and imposed a fine of 15,500 rupees (US$335) for setting houses ablaze.

Pradhan, who contested and won the April 2009 state assembly election from jail representing Kandhamal’s G. Udayagiri constituency, was not initially accused in the police complaint in Nayak’s murder, but his role emerged during the investigation, according to The Hindu.

One of the primary suspects in violence that followed the assassination of Hindu nationalist leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati on Aug. 23, 2008, Pradhan was initially arrested in Berhampur city in neighboring Ganjam district in December 2008. The violence began a day after Saraswati’s killing when Hindu nationalist groups blamed Christians for his murder, although Maoists (extreme Marxists) claimed responsibility for it.

In spite of this week’s conviction, the Orissa state unit of the BJP said the case against Pradhan was weak.

“The case is not strong,” Orissa BJP President Jual Oram told Compass by telephone. “Pradhan was merely present at the scene of crime.”

Pradhan was named in at least 12 police complaints concerning murder and arson. But after he won the election, he was released on bail.

This is the 36-year-old Pradhan’s second conviction. On June 29, Kandhamal’s Fast Track Court I sentenced him to seven years in jail in a case concerning the murder of another Christian, Parikhita Nayak, also from Budedi village, who was killed on Aug. 27, 2008. Though not convicted of murder, Pradhan was found guilty of rioting and causing grievous hurt in the Parikhita Nayak case.

The June 29 judgment led to his arrest, but the Orissa High Court granted him bail eight days later.

The BJP will challenge the convictions in a higher court, Oram said.

Last month Kanaka Rekha Nayak, widow of Parikhita Nayak, complained that despite the conviction of Pradhan and an accomplice, they were immediately given bail and continued to roam the area, often intimidating her.

Rekha Nayak was among 43 survivors who on Aug. 22-24 testified in Delhi before the National People’s Tribunal (NPT), a private hearing of victims of the Kandhamal violence organized by the National Solidarity Forum, a confederation of 60 non-profit groups and people’s movements.

Nayak said local politicians, including Pradhan, hit her husband with an axe. Her husband’s body was later chopped into pieces, she recalled as she sobbed during testimony at the tribunal, headed by Justice A.P. Shah, former chief justice of Delhi High Court.

The fast track courts set up especially to hear cases related to the anti-Christian violence have acquitted Pradhan in seven cases for lack of evidence. Three more cases are pending against him.

The state BJP’s Oram said Christians had created “hype” about the cases against Pradhan to “trouble us.” He added, “The state government is not doing anything to arrest and try the killers of the Swami.”

 

Testimony

The NPT tribunal asserted that between August and December 2008, about 2,000 people were “forced to repudiate their Christian faith.”

The tribunal cited government figures asserting that during the violence from August to December 2008, more than 600 villages were ransacked, 5,600 houses were looted and burned, 54,000 people were left homeless, and 38 people were murdered in Kandhamal alone. It also noted that human rights groups estimated that over 100 people were killed, including women, disabled and aged persons and children, and “an un-estimated number suffered severe physical injuries and mental trauma.”

While there were reports of four women being gang-raped, many more victims of sexual assault were believed to have been intimidated into silence, the tribunal concluded.

As many as 295 church buildings and other places of worship, big and small, were destroyed, and 13 schools, colleges, and offices of five non-profit organizations damaged, it said, adding that about 30,000 people were uprooted and living in relief camps, with many of them still displaced.

“More than 10,000 children had their education severely disrupted due to displacement and fear,” it reported. “Today, after two years, the situation has not improved, although the administration time and again claims it is peaceful and has returned to normalcy.”

The Christian community was deliberately targeted by Hindu nationalist groups such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), the Bajrang Dal and the active members of Bharatiya Janata Party,” the tribunal concluded.

The jury also observed that cries against religious conversions were used as for political mobilization and “to incite horrific forms of violence and discrimination against the Christians” of Dalit (formerly “untouchables” according the caste hierarchy in Hinduism) origin.

“The object is to dominate them and ensure that they never rise above their low caste status and remain subservient to the upper castes,” it added.

The jury accused police of complicity, which “was not an aberration of a few individual police men, but evidence of an institutional bias against the targeted Christian community.”

“The jury is constrained to observe that public officials have colluded in the destruction of evidence, and there is testimony directly implicating the District Collector [the administrative head of a district] in this misdemeanor.”

The jury expressed concern over the lack of mechanisms to protect victims “who have dared to lodge complaints and witnesses who have courageously given evidence in court,” as they “are unable to return to their homes.”

“There is no guarantee of safe passage to and from the courts. They are living in other cities and villages, many of them in hiding, as they apprehend danger to their lives.”

It also noted mental trauma in children.

“There has been no trauma counselling for the affected children and adolescents in Kandhamal. Even today they have nightmares of running in the jungle, with the killers in pursuit, are scared of any loud sound and are afraid of people walking in groups or talking loudly.”

Bollywood lyricist Javed Akhtar, who was part of the tribunal, said that incidents such as the Kandhamal carnage against religious minorities continued to happen with “alarming frequency” in India.

“As citizens of this democracy, we should hang our heads in shame,” he said.

Report from Compass Direct News

Hindu Nationalist Party Official in India Charged in Nun’s Rape

Local politician of Bharatiya Janata Party had attended Christian school.

NEW DELHI, December 11 (CDN) — Police in Orissa state have arrested an official of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for allegedly leading an attack that ended in the rape of a Catholic nun during last year’s anti-Christian mayhem in Kandhamal district.

Officers in the eastern state of Orissa had been searching for Gururam Patra, identified by local residents as the general secretary of the BJP in Kandhamal district, for more than 14 months. Arrested on Saturday (Dec. 6) in Balliguda, Patra was charged with leading the attack but not with rape.

Dilip Kumar Mohanty, an investigating officer, told Compass that a non-bailable warrant had been issued against Patra, accused of being “the main organizer” of the attack on Aug. 25, 2008, in which then-28-year-old Sister Meena Lalita Barwa said she was gang-raped.

Mohanty said he had gathered “sufficient evidence” against Patra.

“He is the one who went into the house where the nun was staying and took her out, along with his associates who outraged her modesty,” Mohanty said.

Previously police had arrested 18 associates of Patra.

The Rev. Ajay Singh of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar told Compass that Patra had become a “terror” for local Christians, as “he was threatening against [those] identifying the accused in numerous cases.”

Violence in Kandhamal took place in August-September 2008, killing more than 100 people – mostly hacked to death or burned alive – and incinerating more than 4,500 houses, as well as destroying over 250 churches and 13 educational institutions. The violence began after a VHP leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, was killed by Maoists (extreme Marxists) on Aug. 23. Hindu extremist groups wrongly blamed local Christians for the assassination.

A local Christian from K. Nuagaon village, where the nun said she was raped, told Compass on condition of anonymity that Patra was the general secretary of the BJP for Kandhamal district. But the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Hindu nationalist conglomerate Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps or RSS), were reluctant to admit association with him.

Suresh Pujari, president of the Orissa state BJP, told Compass that he did not know if Patra was a member of his party.

“I have heard his name, but I have never met him,” he said. “The BJP is a big organization, and I cannot know everyone.”

RSS spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya told Compass that Patra was a block president (a local government position) in Balliguda during the violence.

“He may have attended a few meetings of the RSS, but he was never associated with the organization officially,” he said.

Investigating officer Mohanty said police have yet to establish his affiliations, but “it appears that he was from the RSS group.” Mohanty said Patra was not accused of rape but of being the main leader of the attack.

On Nov. 11, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, told the state assembly House that 85 people from the RSS, 321 members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) and 118 workers of the Bajrang Dal, youth wing of the VHP, were rounded up by the police for the attacks in Kandhamal.

Educated by Christians

Union Catholic Asian News (UCAN) agency reported Patra attended a Catholic school, Vijaya High School, in Raikia town in Kandhamal district.

The news agency quoted the Rev. Mathew Puthyadam, principal of the school when Patra attended, as saying that he was a good student and respected the priests.

“I really wonder how he changed,” Puthyadam told UCAN.

UCAN reported that Puthyadam said right-wing Hindu groups commonly recruit people educated at Christian schools and indoctrinate them against Christians. There were a few other former students of Catholic schools who also led mobs that attacked Christians in Kandhamal, he added.

Puthyadam reportedly said that when Patra’s mother brought him to the school, she said he lost his father in early childhood and they had no money to continue his studies; the priest arranged sponsorship through a Christian aid agency to cover his fees and lodging at Bishop Tobar Hostel.

‘Police Refused to Help’

It was during the August 2008 attacks that Barwa of the Divyajyoti Pastoral Centre in K. Nuagaon area in Balliguda, said she was attacked and raped.

At an Oct. 24, 2008 press conference, the nun said 40 to 50 people attacked the house in which she and priest Thomas Chellantharayil were staying; he also was attacked in the Aug. 25 incident. She said the assailants first slapped and threatened her, then took her out of the house.

“There were three men who first threatened to throw me into the smoldering fire,” she said. “Then they threw me on the veranda [which was] full of plastic pieces. One of them tore my blouse and undergarments. While one man stood on my right hand, the other stood on my left hand and the third man raped me.”

Another man tried to rape her as she got up, she said, and when a mob arrived she was able to hide behind a staircase. But the mob pulled her out and threatened to kill her while others wanted to parade her naked in the street.

“They then beat me up with their hands,” she said. “I was made to walk on the streets wearing my petticoat and sari, as my blouse was torn by one of the attackers. When we reached the market place I saw two policemen there. I asked them to help me, but they refused.”

When the nun filed a complaint at the Balliguda police station, she said, police made no arrests until The Hindu newspaper highlighted her case on Sept. 30, 2008.

Christian leader John Dayal, a member of India’s National Integration Council, said the government has yet to fully address violence against Christians.

“The administration, civil and police, have to act with their full strength to stop the hate campaign that has been unleashed in the last one year, and which has penetrated distant villages, creating schism and hatred between communities,” he said.

On Sunday (Dec. 7) Christians and rights activists formed a new organization, the Association of Victims of Communal Violence in Kandhamal in Phulbani to deal with the growing communal divide in Kandhamal.

“The major task of the new association, working closely with clergy and civil society activists irrespective of religion, is to restore public confidence and to ensure that the victims and witnesses felt safe enough to depose in court,” said Dayal.

He said Christian leaders hope this grassroots initiative will also help in the process of reconciliation and allow people to go back to their villages, where right-wing groups are threatening them with death if they do not convert to Hinduism.

Dayal also said there were rumors of human trafficking in Kandhamal, and that the new association felt special projects for women and especially young girls were urgently required.

“I pray they remain rumors,” he added.

Report from Compass Direct News 

PAKISTAN TALIBAN MILITANTS MURDER AND RAPE CHRISTIANS

Pakistan’s military and the militant Taliban group clashed in the country’s strategic Swat Valley Wednesday, May 6, adding to fears among minority Christians and forcing thousands of civilians to flee the area, reports FCNN.

Some 40,000 people reportedly fled the city of Mingora in northwestern Pakistan and officials said a further half a million others were expected to leave as well. Wednesday’s clashes came shortly after the Taliban threatened to expand Sharia, or Muslim law, far beyond Swat Valley and reports of massive Muslim attacks against minority Christians, including murder and rape.

Since late April, militants of the Taliban group executed at least two residents in a Christian neighborhood while one child died during a crackdown on believers who protested against the Talibanization of Pakistan, local Christians and rights investigators confirmed to BosNewsLife.

United States-based International Christian Concern (ICC), which investigates cases of persecution, said the incidents happened April 21, in Taseer Town near the city of Karachi, where Christians protested against pro-Taliban messages “chalked onto the walls of two churches.”

Earlier, on the outskirts of Sargodha, a key city in Punjab province, a Christian young man was shot and killed and another Christian boy sexually molested by at least one suspected militant, although his links to the Taliban could not be established, family sources said.

 

Many bullets

On April 19, Adeel Masih, 20, was “sprayed with bullets” after returning home from work in Marrium Town near Sargodha, and died of his injuries at a local hospital, said his father Iqbal Masih. At the same time a suspected Muslim militant, identified only as Israar, allegedly raped a 10-year-old Christian boy, Waseem Sabir, in a field of Marrium Towm, residents said.

The man apparently managed to flee, but police promised to investigate both cases. Elsewhere, a nine-year-old Pakistani Christian girl was gang-raped and murdered on April 9, Christian right investigators said. Nisha Javid was reportedly abducted while walking near her home in Punjab’s Essangri village. Her battered body was found two days later in a canal, but local Christians say police has been reluctant to detain suspects. Another Christian girl in her early teens was gang raped by Muslim men twice in as many months here in the village of Gumhe-k-Lidhur near Punjab’s main city of Lahore, according to local residents.

Ambreen Munir 13, a daughter of an impoverished Christian laborer and a house wife, was allegedly kidnapped twice since February by Muslim youth, who took her to a lonely neighborhood where they apparently raped her for several hours. It came on the heels of another incident in the village of Chak # 39 NB where impoverished Christian carpenter Tariq Masih 19 was murdered because of his relationship with a 17-year-old Muslim girl, his maternal uncle, Allah Ditta said.

Churches and rights investigators have accused the Taliban of encouraging its militants and other Muslims to attack Christians, including minors, in several parts of the country. In one of the latest incidents, some 400 angry Muslims armed with clubs, iron rods and firearms attacked homes of Christians and accused five Christian villagers of desecrating the Koran, seen as holy by Muslims, villagers said.

 

Islamic extremism

Eyewitnesses told BosNewsLife the May 1 incident happened in the village of Harappa in a remote part of Punjab, considered a hot-bed for Islamic extremism. The violence broke out after police detained a Christian man Ashfaq Gill April 28 on suspicion of “tearing and desecrating” the Koran, Christian villagers said.

Soon after, Harappa police detained four other Christians, identified as Naseer Gill Madhauv, Imran Gill Naseer, Harris John Emmanuel Hero, Israar Wilson Inyat-Ullah and Ghulam Freed, under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy legislation, Christians said. Villagers went on saying that police also accused all five Christians of bursting into the Girls High School of Harappa and “desecrating the Book of Koran” there during theft.

However the ‘All Pakistan Minorities Alliance’, a major advocacy and political group, denied wrongdoing saying all five detained Christians are its political workers in the area.

Rights groups have urged the government to investigate these incidents and arrest those responsible, amid allegations of reluctance among police to detain suspects. Federal Minister for Minorities and head of APMA Shahbaz Bhatti told BosNewsLife he would “make sure that culprits responsible for this showdown are booked and justice is served” including to the five Christians against whom blasphemy charges have been leveled.

Yet, with the Taliban gaining ground in Pakistan, extremism is spreading and Christians are among minorities with little influence in this predominantly Islamic nation, rights groups warned.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

INDIAN BISHOP WARNS OF ‘SECRET AGENDA’ TO REMOVE CHRISTIANS

As India conducts its month-long national elections, a leading Indian bishop has accused Hindu nationalists of threatening Orissa state voters with violence and pursuing a “secret agenda” to flush Christians out of the region, reports Catholic News Agency.

Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of the Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, speaking in an interview with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), claimed that leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have made death threats against people unwilling to vote for them. He said the BJP was determined to eliminate Christianity from Orissa state’s Kandhamal district, where the vast majority of the state’s churchgoers live. Catholic priests in Orissa report that the BJP has warned Christians in Kandhamal district that if they voted for other candidates, the party would bully them into leaving the area, ACN says.

Nearly 30,000 people fled the district in 2007 and 2008 during anti-Christian attacks on nearly 300 villages in Kandhamal. Eighty people, including a Catholic priest, were killed. About 270 churches and chapels were desecrated while 6,000 homes were destroyed.

Archbishop Cheenath told ACN that people in relief camps in Kandhamal were generally able to vote. However, he said “several thousands” who fled the district during the violence were denied the vote because they were prevented from registering.

“The BJP party officials have threatened to attack the Christians and chase them away. The threats were very serious and there has been a great fear among the people,” the archbishop said, speaking from Bangalore.

“The problem for the people was made worse because the authorities in Orissa took no tangible steps to prevent such things from happening.”

“The secret agenda of the [BJP politicians] is to remove the Christians from Kandhamal,” Archbishop Cheenath said. “It was clear that this was what they wanted to do before the elections and if they win again there is no doubt that they will continue in that way.”

A Catholic priest in Kandhamal on election day reported that trees had been felled to block access to villages in order to prevent people from voting. The same tactic was used during the anti-Christian violence.

The priest said there was hardly any movement of the people.

“My colleagues and I were scared… I reached the polling booth of my village but after only two hours [of voting] the booth was literally empty. We were the first ones to cast our votes.”

The priest told ACN it was important to remember that thousands of people are still living outside the district and had not exercised their vote.

“Are these not citizens?” he asked.

The priest also alleged that four Hindus gang-raped a girl after learning that her uncle had refused to abandon his Christian faith.

In the run-up to the elections, BJP Kandhamal candidate Ashok Sahu was arrested for making an anti-Christian speech in the village of Raikia. He has since been released.

According to ACN, Sahu was closely linked to Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, the militant anti-Christian Hindu leader whose murder last August, allegedly by Maoists, sparked widespread violence against churchgoers.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

EXTREMISTS PLACE UNREASONABLE DEMANDS ON INDIAN CHRISTIANS

Last year, anti-Christian violence affected nearly half of India’s districts and targeted believers in 310 villages, according to the All India Christian Council, reports MNN.

The World Bible Translation Center reports that Hindu radicals have recently placed unreasonable demands on Orissa’s believers. Extremists are requiring Christians to reconvert to Hinduism, and in light of next month’s elections, vote for the Hindu fundamentalist party. Believers also must withdraw any reports of violence that were submitted to the government.

Last year’s anti-Christian violence was one of the reasons for the split between India’s ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); BJD was one of its oldest allies. According to the All India Christian Council (AICC), the 2008 anti-Christian violence killed nearly 60 people, including 2 pastors. Christians in over 300 villages were targeted; 4,400 houses were burned, and 50,000 people were left homeless. Nearly 20,000 individuals were injured in attacks, and two women were gang-raped; one of them was a nun. Hindu extremists now are forcing Christians in Orissa to vote for the fundamentalist party in elections beginning April 16.

Anti-Christian violence in India has continued, and Voice of the Martyrs Canada received several reports in recent weeks. On March 9, Hindu militants armed with rods and hockey sticks forced entrance to a pastor’s home in New Delhi where they beat him, his wife and son. The militants also stole 15,000 rupees ($370 CAD) and threatened to return and murder his family if he didn’t leave within a week.

On March 11, another pastor was attacked by Hindu extremists after a prayer meeting. Radicals beat the pastor and told him to stop conducting prayer meetings. He suffered fractures to his back and ribs. Pray for healing for these believers, and ask God to give wisdom to church leaders in India.

WBTC-India distributes Easy-to-Read Oriya Scripture to India’s believers. This version, written at a third grade reading level, is well-suited for those in the region who are poor and undereducated. WBTC-India provides this written Word for house churches.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

SAUDI ARABIA: RAPE JAILING FOR THE VICTIM!!!

If it wasn’t Saudi Arabia this would be extremely difficult to believe – a woman that was gang-raped has been jailed for adultery and also will suffer 100 lashes after she has the baby that came about as a result of the rape. Shocked? Stunned? This is the tragedy for women under strict Islamic law in Saudi Arabia.

The young woman accepted a lift from a man who took her to a house where she was raped by him and four other men. She fell pregnant as a result of the rape and went to the King Fahd Hospital for Armed Forces out of desperation seeking an abortion. Instead she was arrested and ‘confessed’ to ‘forced intercourse’ with those that attacked her.

The judge made a ruling that she had committed adultery (she was not married) and jailed her for a year, as well as the flogging after she gives birth to the child.

My view is that this is appalling and a disgrace to humanity. Women are treated as lower class citizens in Saudi Arabia and men living in that country should be ashamed of their country for allowing this disgraceful treatment of women.

Shame Saudi Arabia, shame!!!

BANGLADESH: PASTOR’S WIFE GANG-RAPED, HOME ROBBED

Influential Muslim villagers, local media said to falsely blame Christians, Hindu.

VENNABARI, Bangladesh, January 20 (Compass Direct News) – The pastor of a Baptist church in this village about a 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Dhaka said that earlier this month local Muslims tied him and his wife up, robbed his living quarters on the church property and gang-raped his wife.

The Rev. Shankar Hazra, 55, of Chaksing Baptist church in Gopalganj district, said that before leaving, the assailants desecrated the church building.

The night of the attack, the pastor said, he and his wife, 45, went out to a toilet outside their home at about 2 a.m. on Jan. 6.

“Suddenly a man loomed up from the darkness and thrust the snout of a homemade rifle at my chest and told me to keep mum, otherwise both of us would be killed,” Rev. Hazra told Compass. “Around seven to eight people swooped on us and tied me and my wife. They blindfolded my wife and took her inside the house.”

While Rev. Hazra was tied to a pillar on the porch of his house of corrugated tin and wood, the assailants took the keys of chests and trunks and looted valuables: gold and silver jewelry worth US$500, cash totaling US$300, a mobile phone, television, CD players, all their clothes except his cassock, and utensils.

“They even looted my daughters’ dresses,” Rev. Hazra told Compass. “After looting everything, they gang-raped my wife.”

The assailants also asked about the whereabouts of his two grown daughters, who had left the previous day after spending the Christmas and New Year holidays with their parents. Their daughters, ages 22 and 20, had returned to their studies in separate districts.

“If my daughters had been present in the house at that night, they would have been victims as their mother was,” Rev. Hazra said.

After the assailants left, Rev. Hazra managed to untie himself and found his wife lying unconscious on the bed, he said.

“My neighbors came and rushed her to a nearby hospital, and that hospital referred my wife to another big hospital in Gopalganj district because her condition was very serious,” he said.

The assailants also broke the door of the church building and urinated and defecated there, Rev. Hazra added.

 

Non-Muslims Blamed

Rev. Hazra and his wife said all of the assailants were Muslims, but that villagers tried to implicate non-Muslims and portray the attack as resulting from internal conflicts among Christians.

Police, influential villagers and local Muslim-owned media are trying to conceal likely anti-Christian motives for the crime, he said, by falsely accusing two Christians and a Hindu of participating – and labeling a local Baptist pastor as the “mastermind” of the attack. Police wrote the First Information Report (FIR) implicating the Christians and Hindu based on lies from villagers, and Rev. Hazra signed it without reading it due to his shaken state, he said.

Rev. Hazra’s wife, Depali Hazra, later filed an affidavit contesting the FIR in which the two Christians and one Hindu, along with a known criminal who is Muslim, were accused of the gang rape and theft. The Christians and Hindu were not involved in the rape and robbery, she reported in the affidavit.

“I was seriously ill after [the] gang rape, and my husband’s mind was unhinged at that time,” she reported. “Only [the] Muslim man Ilias Mridha and his yes-men did it. When I recuperated a little bit from illness, I came to know about the names of the Christians and Hindu in the case. Spontaneously and knowledgably I did this affidavit to get rid of those Christian and Hindu names from the case copy.”

Local police inspector Liakat Ali confirmed to Compass that non-Muslims had been implicated in the rape and theft charges filed at the police station. Other statements in the FIR – such as the number of assailants, four, rather than the seven or eight cited by the pastor – are at odds with Rev. Hazra’s account, further indicating that police relied on second-hand information from villagers rather than the experience related by the victims.

“We have arrested three people so far in connection with gang rape and looting out of four people mentioned in the FIR by Hazra,” said Ali. “Among those mentioned, two people are Christians, one Hindu and one Muslim. According to the case information, the mastermind of the incident is Monotosh Banarjy, a pastor of a Baptist church, who might not have been present at that time.”

There is no criminal record against the Christian arrested, Sushil Baroi, a Catholic, he said.

“But the arrested Muslim man, Ilias Mridha, is a criminal who had been arrested several times before,” said Ali.

Local Christians said Mridha, 38, who has been jailed several times, commits crimes under the direction of local influential persons.

Father Jacob Gobbi, head priest at Baniarchar Catholic Church, told Compass that Baroi was not involved in the gang rape and robbery.

“He is innocent, and we want that he should be released as soon as possible,” Fr. Gobbi said.

Rev. Hazra said he and his wife are living temporarily with her relatives as protection from further attacks at their church quarters.  

Report from Compass Direct News

BAPTISTS ARE AMONG VICTIMS OF VIOLENT PERSECUTION IN INDIA

The persecution of a Baptist layman in India’s state of Orissa provided the focus of an Oct. 13 article in The New York Times about the oppression of Christians by Hindu militants in the region, reports Baptist Press.

Solomon Digal symbolized almost two months of suffering inflicted by the violence, which has claimed more than 30 lives and seen 3,000 homes and 130 church buildings destroyed.

The persecution began in the aftermath of the Aug. 23 murder of a revered Hindu teacher in the area. Although police have said communist rebels committed the killing, Hindu extremists blamed Christians and began inciting violence against them in retribution.

Digal, a Christian since childhood, told The Times that his family was forced to turn over their Bibles, hymn books and images of Jesus to village leaders in Orissa’s volative Kandhamal district. The family was forced to kneel and watch as the symbols of their faith were burned. Family members were told that if they did not convert to Hinduism, their house would be destroyed and they would be killed or driven from the village.

Later, a stiff fine of 501 rupees was levied against the family for telling a reporter about their circumstances.

Although India’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, Hindus in at least six Indian states are forcing Christians to convert under threat of violence. Christians account for only about 2 percent of India’s 1.1 billion people. The religious problems are heightened by long-running ethnic and economic tensions between the Pana and Kandha people groups, according to the Times article.

Other stories of persecution abound, ranging from five men who were forced by machete-wielding neighbors to submit to a conversion ritual to the story of a Catholic priest and nun who were paraded naked in the streets before she was gang-raped.

When The Times reporter asked the leader of a Hindu radical group in the state to respond to the rape allegation, he described the violence as “a spontaneous reaction” and said the nun had engaged in consensual sex.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

INDIA: EVIDENCE CONCOCTED AGAINST CHRISTIANS IN MURDER OF HINDU LEADER

Orissa police confirm Maoists killed Saraswati; thousands flee amid continued violence.

NEW DELHI, October 10 (Compass Direct News) – After police in the eastern state of Orissa confirmed this week that Maoists killed Hindu nationalist leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a Hindu extremist group circulated allegedly forged documents in an attempt to implicate a local church in the Aug. 23 murder.

The Hindu Jagaran Samukhya (Society for Revival of Hinduism or HJS) circulated documents saying the plan to kill Saraswati in Kandhamal district was made at a meeting at Bethikala Church on May 25 attended by 17 people following a briefing and command from religious leaders, the Press Trust of India news agency reported yesterday.

Local Christian leaders responded by saying they will file defamation charges.

“We will file both civil and criminal defamation cases against the person who made such allegations,” Father Joseph Kalathil from the Catholic Archbishop House in Bhubaneswar and the Rev. Fr. Prafulla Ku Sabhapati, president of the Bethikala Parish Council of Kandhamal, said in a statement. “Not only our signatures were forged, the contents of the documents were also fabricated.”

On Oct. 6 Orissa state police confirmed that Maoists killed Saraswati, a day after the chief of the Orissa unit of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist, Sabyasachi Panda, told NDTV 24X7 news that his organization was behind the murder.

The Maoists killed Saraswati because he was a key leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), Panda told the channel. The VHP, he said, used non-tribal traders’ money to build VHP’s youth wing, Bajrang Dal, and ran a campaign against Christians, falsely accusing them of forced conversions and killing cows, considered holy by Hindus.

“This forced us to attack him,” Panda said. “We left two letters claiming responsibility for the murders. But the [Chief Minister Naveen] Patnaik government suppressed those letters. It is a BJP [Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party] government; they will support the VHP. The state government made it look like Christian groups were responsible for the attack. The Christian community in Orissa does not have any Maoist organization supporting them here.”

There were also reports, however, of the Orissa police having arrested three tribal Christians in connection with Saraswati’s murder. The Indian Express reported that the three had confessed their involvement.

A representative of the Christian Legal Association told Compass that according to sources, the police had tortured the three Christians to pressure them to confess a crime they did not commit.

After the assassination of Saraswati, Hindu extremist groups blamed local Christians and began attacks on them, their houses and their churches. The worst violence against Christians in modern India erupted in spite of the Orissa police and media stating on the day of the murder that suspected Maoists killed Saraswati.

According to the All India Christian Council, more than 60 people have been killed, more than 18,000 injured and around 4,500 houses and churches destroyed in the “retributive” violence. Two Christian women, including a nun, were also gang-raped. The violence, which later spread to at least 14 districts of Orissa, has left more than 50,000 people homeless.

 

Attacks Continue

Orissa’s Kandhamal district remained tense even 48 days after the violence began.

Yesterday about 15 houses were burned down by a mob in the Lansaripalli village in Kantamal Block of neighboring Boudh district, The Hindu reported. The attackers came from the Gochhapada area of Kandhamal district.

“Thursday’s was the third incident in Boudh district,” added the daily. “More than 100 houses were burnt down in two separate attacks in the past few days.”

On Wednesday (Oct. 8), a mob burned and looted at least 25 houses belonging to Christians in the Balligada village under Daringbadi police station in Kandhamal’s Nuagam Block, Father Ajay Singh of the Catholic Archdiocese of Bhubaneswar told Compass.

On Tuesday (Oct. 7), over five houses were torched in Jalespanga area under Phiringia police jurisdiction in Kandhamal. Another house was burned in the Sujeli village of G. Udayagiri Block the same day.

The Hindu also said the more than 16,000 Christians living in various relief camps were not returning to their villages, fearing attacks on them if they refused to convert to Hinduism.

Fr. Singh from the Bhubaneswar Archdiocese told Compass that over 12,000 Christians from various relief camps had moved out of Kandhamal to other districts and states, as they feared more attacks.

 

Supporting Violence

The president of the VHP, Ashok Singhal, told Zee News channel on Sunday (Oct. 5), “What Hindu organizations including the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, India’s chief Hindu nationalist group] are doing in Orissa is all legal and is the reaction of the murder of VHP leader Saraswati, who was like Jesus Christ to us.”

In an interview with The Week magazine (Oct. 5), Singhal said that Hindu youth are “ready to die and, if necessary, to kill. [Their] patience is ebbing.”

Singhal added that a “Hindu uprising” had begun, “and the political parties will have to rethink and reinvent themselves, for their own existence. If there is no arrangement for Hindus’ security, they’ll do it on their own. The Hindus will not die. If that self-defence is militancy, so be it … the Hindu never went around the world for suzerainty or to convert … now they are here, undermining us. That causes anger. In fact many want to fight back this harvesting of Hindus.”

In addition, a leader of the Bajrang Dal in the southern state of Karnataka admitted to supporting recent attacks on churches while speaking to The Week magazine. “We supported those who attacked the churches, as it is a justified fight,” Bajrang Dal convenor Mahendra Kumar said.

The violence in Orissa spread to several other states, including Karnataka, where around 20 churches were destroyed and 20 Christians were attacked in the recent weeks.

As many political parties and rights groups have demanded a ban on the Bajrang Dal for attacking Christians and churches in Orissa and other states, the federal government ruled by the United Progressive Alliance has mandated the National Integration Council to give its recommendations, reported the Times of India today.

The Bajrang Dal, however, warned that any such move would have “grave consequences” for the government politically, saying there was “no legal ground” for such an action.

There are 897,861 Christians in Orissa, which has a population of 36.8 million.  

Report from Compass Direct News

BANGLADESH: SUSPECTS CHARGED IN RAPE OF PASTOR’S DAUGHTER

Investigation, DNA test point toward two alleged rapists; one remains at large.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, October 1 (Compass Direct News) – Police have submitted a charge sheet to a district court accusing two persons of raping a pastor’s daughter in the village of Laksmipur, said a state prosecutor.

Sayed Tariqul Islam told Compass that police submitted the charge sheet on Sept. 7 based on an extensive investigation following a DNA test that turned out positive. Pastor Motilal Das, who has long received threats from villagers upset with his success as an evangelist, said that local residents gang-raped his 13-year-old daughter in an attempt to drive him from the area.

State prosecutor Islam said Shakil Ahmed Shebul and Dulal Miah are charged with raping Elina Das at 3 a.m. on May 2. If convicted, they will receive life terms in prison, he said.

“The DNA report is everything to prove them guilty, and I expect that they will be punished with life-term imprisonment,” said Islam.

Previously a medical college had submitted a false forensic test report indicating no evidence of sexual assault. Villagers in Laksmipur, in Fulbaria sub-district 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Dhaka, believe relatives of the accused men paid off the Mymensingh Medical College Hospital Forensic Department to fabricate the false test results.

Pastor Das has said relatives of the alleged rapists have offered him a large sum of money to withdraw the case or settle out of court – while continuing to threaten him. He had found his daughter lying unconscious in front of his house early in the morning of May 2, he said, after five men from Mymensingh district raped her.

The charge sheet submitted by police and the positive DNA report state that the girl’s clothes were torn and marked with the semen of Shebul. A close neighbor of Pastor Das, Shebul applied for bail on Tuesday (Sept. 29), but the court refused to grant it, said Islam.

Miah remains at large. Local police inspector Tarapod Shikder told Compass that assiduous efforts were underway to arrest him.

Pastor Das told Compass that he was dismayed that the charge sheet did not require Shebul to be taken on remand by police for interrogation.

“If the arrested person was held on remand for interrogation, police would get more information regarding other rapists,” Pastor Das.

Inspector Shikder told him that police had already taken Shebul on remand for interrogation and obtained little information, Pastor Das said.

“Nonetheless,” Pastor Das said, “the charge sheet will help to heal the scars of my grief-stricken daughter if proper justice is done.”

 

Upset Neighbors

Defending the initial false DNA report, Forensic Department head Akhteruzzaman Talukder of Mymensingh Medical College Hospital had told Compass that he did not find any gang-rape injury or trace of forced sexual activity.

Pastor Das’s daughter “might have had a love affair with someone in the village,” Talukder said. “Her lover might have been guarded there by his several friends. When the family members came to know the incident, they cooked it up as gang rape.”

Pastor Das and Muslim villagers were extremely upset by the initial forensic report. He subsequently had his daughter’s clothes tested for DNA profiling at the National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory of Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

His Muslim neighbors, he said, consider the positive DNA test a ray of hope for proper judgment. Pastor Das acknowledged his gratitude to some of the village neighbors who gave him moral support during that time.

“I cannot express my gratitude in words to some of my Muslim neighbors in the village who gave me courage and moral support to go forward when I got the false forensic report from Mymensingh Medical College,” he said.

When Pastor Das initially went to police to file charges, he said, police were reluctant to register the case.

“Police told me that it was a false case,” he said. “They also said that it was a fabricated drama. Police spoke with my daughter in filthy language and showed prurient interest in the details of the incident in front of us rather than filing the case quickly.”

The U.S. Department of State’s 2008 International Religious Freedom Report, released in Sept. 19, notes that Bangladeshi government officials, “including the police, were often ineffective in upholding law and order and were sometimes slow to assist religious minority victims of harassment and violence.”

The day of the alleged rape, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom announced annual recommendations for countries to be designated “Countries of Particular Concern,” but it did not include Bangladesh.

Rather, the commission put Bangladesh on its “Watch List” due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the government. Other countries on the Watch List are Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria.

According to USCIRF, Islamist radicalism and violence, the threat of serious violence and continued discrimination against members of religious minority communities remain significant concerns in Bangladesh.

Story from Compass Direct News