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October 20, 2009

Indian Christians unhappy at verdicts on Kandhamal violence

by Anto Akkara
Ecumenical News International

BANGALORE, India — Christians were elated when a court hearing cases of anti-Christian violence in the troubled Kandhamal district of India’s eastern Orissa state handed out life imprisonment to the accused in the murder of a pastor.

However, joy about the Sept. 23 verdict of the special “fast track” court that sentenced the five people accused in the murder of Pastor Akbar Digal who was stabbed to death at Sulesaru in 2008, was short-lived.

The following day, due to lack of evidence, the same court acquitted three people accused of the murder of Christian Kantheswar Digal for lack of evidence.

Those acquitted included Manoj Pradhan, who had been elected to the state legislature for the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while in jail awaiting trial. Pradhan still faces trials on charges of involvement in other killings of Christians.

“We were very happy that finally the law of the land has started catching up with the culprits. But the second verdict is very disappointing,” Roman Catholic Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Bhubaneswar, which covers troubled Kandhamal, told Ecumenical News International.

Archbishop Cheenath was speaking to ENI after addressing the standing (executive) committee meeting in Bangalore of Catholic Bishops Conference of India on the Kandhamal situation.

More than 50,000 Christians from troubled Kandhamal were left homeless after the August 2008 killing there of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Maoist rebels claimed responsibility for the killing of the Hindu monk who had led a vociferous campaign against conversions to Christianity. Hindu extremists asserted, however, the murder was a Christian conspiracy.

Facing criticism for its failure to curb the mayhem, the Orissa government set up two special fast-track courts to try cases of Kandhamal carnage as police had arrested less than 650 of the 11,350 people named in about 800 criminal cases related to the spate of killings.

In July one of the courts acquitted 16 people accused of being part of a Hindu mob that had torched the police station at Gochhapada and killed a police officer while fellow police officials fled in September 2008 during the anti-Christian violence.

Rajendra Digal, son of Kantheswar Digal, of whose murder the BJP lawmaker was acquitted, contended that many of the witnesses in the case had been threatened when they went to testify in the court.