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8 JULY 2008
Communal Fire again in Kandhamal

Christian Community was slowly recovering from the fright and night mare of December 2007 when the fundamentalists led by Swami Laxmananda Saraswati destroyed and vandalized with impunity the Christian institutions and religious houses such as churches, convents, residences, hostels, minor seminaries, dispensaries, schools, computer centres, etc. But the peace and normalcy were short-lived because communal fire flared up again on 8th July 2008. The Christian community was attacked by the Sangh Parivar led by the so called Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and his followers.

The Sangh Parivar is famous for twisting facts to suit their mischief or make white black or the other way. The immediate cause for this communal flare-up was the killing of a cow by the Scheduled Caste Hindus (Hindu Harjans) in a village called Malipada. There are also Christians in that village. The Harjans in general are in the habit of eating beef. So there was nothing unusual in the killing of a cow. But the first assistant of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, Madhaba Baba happened to go to that village in a jeep. After reaching the village they came to know that a cow has been killed. So they went and scolded the people and took photos. People wanted the Baba to delete the photos. Baba refused. So, the people got angry and beat up the Baba and his driver and forced them to drink cow blood and smeared them with the same. All these information is from very reliable sources (I say this because the news paper which is very partial would report that Christians killed the cow and attacked the swami, and this would be a pretext for them to attack).

Madhaba Baba and his driver went and reported the high handed action of the Malipada village. Straight away Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati together with his associates went to attack Malipada village holding in their hands swords, spears and other lethal weapons. The villagers stood their ground and threatened to retaliate. Fearing this, the Swami and his associates withdrew.
He was going to Balliguda, where maximum destruction was inflicted in December 2007, in order to gather more people to attack the people who disobeyed him. On the way the fanatics attacked the Jesuit Residence in Tumudibandho. (My past experience tells me that what happened in Malipada was a pretext to attack Christians). **When the criminals left the residence one could see only the diabolic destruction and devastation of properties. Main gate, statues of the Mary and St. Ignatius, refrigerator, almirah, dining table, chairs, invertor, doors and windows were destroyed beyond use. Three living rooms were looted and devastated.
They also attacked the Bhagvan Ashram, an orphanage run by a Christian, Mr. Satpati. Children are on the road. I don’t have the details yet. **
Why again this attack after six months? The simple reason is that, after the largest communal flare-up and devastation in the history of Orissa, the kingpin and his associates of criminal attack on Christians during Christmas 2007 have not been nabbed and punished. They are moving about jolly good fellows under state protection. No proper compensation has been given to the victims who have suffered enormous loss of personal belongings and properties. This callous attitude of the administration amounts to their connivance with the criminals who are emboldened to commit further crimes. Attack on Jesuit Residence and the orphanage is the undeniable evidence for this. It is becoming the order of the day that the Minorities are ruled by the mob violence.

A sense of panic has gripped various parts of Kandhamal district. It is said that Sangh Parivar has blocked the roads by felling the forest trees. They have called for a Bandh on 9th in Kandhamal district.
Rev. Msgr. Joseph Kalathil
Vicar General of Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar
 
Keep praying as the Hindu right wing bandh calls (today) normally are accompanied by terrible violence against Christians, with priests, nuns and women targeted.
God bless:gopray:
Derrick
 
**New attack against Christians in Orissa, an orphanage is destroyed and a parish church attacked
by Nirmala Carvalho
asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=12719&size=A
The reaction by the Sangh Parivar Hindu fundamentalist group is caused by the butchery of a cow. Last Christmas the same area saw the destruction of 13 churches and the killing of three people. Local bishop accuses the government of collusion with the attackers.
[it is important to stress that Christians had no role to play in the butchery of the cow but it does not matter as any excuse will serve the purpose of instigating violence.]
**
 
July 8, 2008
Fresh violence against Christians erupts in Orissa

theindiancatholic.com/report.asp?nid=10732
NEW DELHI (ICNS): Fresh violence broke out on Tuesday against Christians in Orissa, where communal violence last Christmas season killed at least four Christians.
Groups of Hindu activists on Tuesday blocked roads and attacked Christian institutions in some tribal areas of the state, said a Church source.

Church people in Barakhama, which witnessed several cases of attacks in last December, fear the violence is spreading.
 
**Anti-Christian violence: Jesuit residence attacked
**BHUBANESHWAR (ICNS): Activists of Hindu groups attacked a Jesuit residence on Tuesday morning in the tribal-dominated region of Kandhamal district in Orissa.
theindiancatholic.com/report.asp?nid=10733

They destroyed the main gate, entered the premises, ransacked the building, and destroyed a chapel inside it, including its liturgical vestments.None of the three Jesuits of the residence were present there when the attack happened. Its cook ran to safety. Parish Priest of the Tumudibabdha parish, Father Cornelius Lakra SJ, was away in Jamshedpur attending a conference. Two other Jesuits of the house were on a visit to the nearby Jesuit residence in Rutungia Village.
 
**INDIA Archbishop Seeks Protection For Christians After Violence **
July 9, 2008 ucanews.com/2008/07/09/archbishop-seeks-protection-for-christians-after-violence/
KANJANEDY, India (UCAN) – The head of the Catholic Church in Orissa has sought security for Christians following renewed anti-Christian violence in the eastern Indian state…

“They have dared to do it again,” Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar told UCA News on July 9, a day after mobs attacked Christian institutions.

Archbishop Cheenath said he has written to federal and state governments to ensure security for Christians in Orissa’s Kandhamal district. The Divine Word prelate is based in Bhubaneswar, the state capital, 1,745 kilometers southeast of New Delhi.

Cuttack-Bhubaneswar and its four suffragan dioceses cover Orissa, where Christians form only 2.4 percent of 36.8 million people and Hindus 94.4 percent.

Authorities have now issued prohibitory orders and deployed police platoons in Tumudibandh, a town in Kandhamal about 350 kilometers west of Bhubaneswar. Anti-Christian violence erupted in the district during the past Christmas season, when Hindu mobs attacked and destroyed Christian churches and institutions, and burned about 400 houses.

On July 8, mobs of Hindu radicals cut trees to block roads and attacked Christian institutions in Tumudibandh. They damaged a Jesuit-managed church, its priests’ residence and a Protestant orphanage there. Children from the orphanage ran into the forest to escape the violence.

Sudhansu Paraset, a Protestant farmer in Malikpada village, near Tumudibandh, told UCA News the latest flare-up was over the sale of beef. Hindus consider cows sacred and Orissa is among several Indian states that ban cow slaughter.

As he related it, some people in Malikpada slaughtered a cow and sold beef to some Christians and other villagers. As the Christians were returning to their house, Bula Chauduri, a Hindu religious leader, and his supporters stopped them. Chauduri, known locally as Madhaba Baba, abused the Christians for killing a cow and threatened to send them to jail after using his cell phone to take a picture of them carrying beef. The villagers first pleaded with him to delete the photo, but snatched the phone when he refused.
Father Kalathil’s letter to federal and state governments, made available to UCA News, …said. **“I would like to plead with you that Christians are not sacrificial animals to be sacrificed for propitiating fundamentalists and their associates,” **Father Kalathil wrote.
 
Code: 
                                                                                       09.07.2008
To
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Hon’ble Prime Minister of India
152, South Block
New Delhi – 110001
Dear Prime Minister,
Swami Laxmananad Saraswati who enjoys the good will and security of a section of the State Administration is at his mischief again. He has been responsible for the unprecedented communal destruction and vandalism of Christian Community and Christian institutions in December, 2007.
On 8th July, 2008 he and his associates have attacked Jesuit Residence in Tumudibandh Block of Kandhamal District. When the criminals left the residence one could see only diabolic destruction and devastation. Main gate, statues of Mother Mary and St. Ignatius, refrigerator, almirah, dinning table, household things, chairs, invertor, doors and windows, etc. have been destroyed. Three living rooms were also looted and devastated. They also attacked the Bhagvan Ashram, an orphanage run by a Christian. Mr.Sanjeeb Pradhan. The children are on the street now, I am told.
I would like to plead with you that Christians are not sacrificial animals to be sacrificed for propitiating fundamentalists and their associates. I earnestly request you, please use your police force and judicial system to administer justice to the Minorities, and even to punish them if they are guilty of any crime. Or is there a parallel system of justice administered by Laxamnanda Saraswati and Sangh Parivar? **
Such daring attack has again taken place because, after the communal carnage in December, 2007, the real culprits are still at large intimidating the minorities. Neither has the State Government, nor the Central Government given adequate compensation to the victims. So the criminals are emboldened to attack again with impunity.
It is very unfortunate that the minorities are handed over to the whims of a mad crowd of 300 to 400. In case of attack on Minorities, the police force is often mere spectators. The unprecedented devastation in December, 2007, Kandhamal District and the attack on Jesuit Residence and the orphanage in Tumudibandh are convincing evidence for what I have said.
Pleading for your kind attention and with sincere thanks I remain.**Rev. Msgr. Joseph Kalathil
Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar
 
Kandhamal situation report 8th July 08 Tumidibandh incident
A Fact finding report by John Dayal, 9th July 2008 - Police watch as goons enforce bandh - Released to the Media by John Dayal
PREAMBLE: I was in the recently refurbished seminary in the Block headquarter town of Balliguda in Kandhamal district – the building had been pillaged and almost burnt down during the Christmas 2007 anti Christian violence in the area – speaking in a post lunch session to senior theology students when a teacher burst into the room to tell us fresh valence had broken out and three church buildings – a Jesuit home, their Chapel, and a orphanage – had been attacked in the adjoining block of Tumidibandh, 120 km from the district capital of Phulbani. A near curfew situation became apparent immediately in the small market town, a situation which we have seen in recent years across the country where shopkeepers, smelling trouble off the grapevine long before official information trickles in, hastily put down their shutters, vehicles just vanish off the road as if by magic and a combination of ill-kempt policemen, home guards and young men on motorcycles assume charge.

My hosts were concerned about my own security – I have the dubious distinction of having the state Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad demanding, by turns, my arrest, my expulsion or a ban on my entry into the Kandhamal district or the state, perhaps because I sort of immediately write down what I see and what I learn from eye witnesses, victims and government officials, preferably within hours of an incident taking place. Recorded truth is unpalatable as it almost always challenges and contradicts the concoctions dished out by the Sangh Parivar spokesman to a local media that is either so gullible as to be unprofessional, or is a party to the political beliefs and designs of the BJP and its sister organisations. A harsh charge, but tragically too true and so easily substantiated in Kandhamal and Bhubaneswar. They advised me to return to my camp a dozen kilometers away. I was struck there for the next 24 hours, all because of rumours, four illegally felled Sal trees, and a mischievous grapevine which now has the district in its grip.
The mechanics of this private curfew were glaringly clear within a few minutes. There is but one direct road that connects market towns such as Brahminigaon, now attracting global infamy as the site of the Christmas desecrations, Darringbadi, the Switzerland they say of Orissa, Balliguda and other townships all the way to the border of Koraput. Somewhere between Balliguda and Tumidibandh, the next sizable population, is the ashram of the self styled Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, the mastermind of the anti Christian pogrom in Orissa and a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad who has taken an oath to rid the region of all those who are not Hindus, and who do not obey his dictat on how they live their daily lives, including what their children must study and what food they can, or cannot eat, and to hell with their lifelong dietary habits.

This is an ashram with a few hundred young girls and women who are taught Sanskrit and a few of the martial arts. At the swami’s call, they come out, squat on the road while their male colleagues chop down two trees on their side of the ashram’s boundary walls. All vehicles come to a grinding halt. Pedestrians and motorcyclists who get caught by the swiftness of the operation are given a simple test to prove their faith, and their loyalty to the swami. They are asked to recite the ‘gayatri’ mantra. If they do, and thereby pass the test, they are told as loyal Hindus they should extend moral support to the road closure and stay back for three hours. If they cannot, they are given the thrashing of their lives.
I have met several Christian youth who could not recite the Mantra and were beaten up – by the young women, and beaten up bad. Over sometime, a few unfortunate Muslim youth – and there are but a handful of Muslims in this region – have had to suffer the further ignominy of being stripped so their faith could be ascertained from the fact of their circumcision. The police maintain a discreet distance from the site; launch their own patrols and checkpoints far from the Ashram.
Soon, the stray policeman or two made their way to the Seminary, and later to most Christian establishments. As usual, it was too little, too late. Over the next thirty-six hours, the police could not guarantee safe movement even of emergency vehicles during the district `bandh’.
The incident had taken place on 8th July. It was early in the morning of 10th July that we could as an investigating team finally come to Tumidibandh from Balliguda in two jeeps, crossing the stretch in front of the Ashram of Lakshmanananda, where the aforesaid two " sal" trunks, now pushed to the side of the road, spoke of the impunity with which the man defies forest laws, fells rare timber, and enforces his writ where the rule of law should run.
 
The members of my team where Fr Vijay Naik, who heads the Ecumenical Fellowship of Christians of the District, Professor Fr Prabodh Pradhan, who heads the Balliguda Seminary, Fr Chellam Thomas, and Mr. Hemant Naik ,a social activist and local expert who has been acting as my interpreter since December 2007. We could meet almost all victims, residents of the village of Tumidibandh which has about 220 households consisting of both Tribal and Dalits, and representing every variety of faith, Christian, Hindu, and traditional, police and other officials. The following is our report:
THE VHP CHARGE: Lakshmanananda Saraswati, who figures in over 100 affidavits filed before the Justice Basudev Panigrahi commission which begins hearings on 14th July 2008 in Phulbani, as the mastermind and financier of the hate campaigns and violence against religious minorities, made the following allegation as enumerated again at a press conference on 10th July as to why he called a Bandh and blocked traffic. Saraswati said his assistant, one Madhu Baba, and some other followers had heard that a cow had been slaughtered in Malicmadi village of Tumidibandh Block, and when they went to investigate, the younger baba was manhandled. He further charged that him followers had discovered plastic pouches with animal flesh purportedly that of a cow in the refrigerator in the kitchen of the Jesuit house about two kilometers away from the village. His followers then ransacked the kitchen and some rooms, desecrated Chapel, broke the Holy Cross as also a fiber glass large statue of St Francis Xavier, before going down the road to smash the two large huts that went for an orphanage and hostel for 40 Christian boys and girls. The swami himself went to the police station and demanded the arrest of Christians as well as of the Priests.

THE INVESTIGATIONS:
Our inspection of the Daily Diary of the Tumidibandh Police station, headed by Orissa Police Sub inspector Madhusudhan Janasmta [mobile phone number 09437885599] revealed two notings; The first was Case no. 30 of 2008 under sections 341, 323, 379, 506 of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 7 of the [Anti} Cow Slaughter Act. It said the incident took place at 10.15 in the morning of 8th July 2008, the complainant was L. N. Saraswati himself, and the accused he had named were ``Villagers of Malicpadi, not far from the police station. The second case, number 31, was under sections 452, 427, 379, 379 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code for damage to the church properties, and the culprits named were “Five persons of L Saraswati.” Saraswati’s charges were that the cow slaughter led to spontaneous reaction and houses were damaged by people who discovered beef in them.
We interviewed over twenty people in the Malicpada village, among them men and women, people owing allegiance to the Congress party, the Biju Janata Dal, which rules in the state together with the Bharatiya Janata party. The people were Hindu Panos, or Dalits, Christian Panos and a few Tribals. To a person, they deposed that there had been never any community discord in the village despite their various ethnic, religious and political identities. They said traditionally, both Tribals and Panos of all religious persuasions ate beef, cow or buffalo, but there had been no slaughter of cattle in recent times in the village, and certainly not this year as the VHP was alleging. Mr. Gajapati Mandal, the head of the local Congress unit who acted as the chief spokesperson said the Superintendent and deputy superintend of police and officials of the Collectorate had interrogated them for many hours asking them to show the place where a cow had been killed. “No cow was killed and therefore there no place to show the police officers,” the villagers said. They charged that if some plastic pouches of meat had been taken to the police station by men of Saraswati, they may have got the meat from elsewhere to create a scene.

Mullick also pointed out something which was self evident. The Jesuit house was far away, down the main road and then into a lane just behind the area Forest Division office which has a strong presence of officials. How come the VHP men made a beeline for the Christian buildings if they had not made a plan beforehand. The police have not said they discovered any flesh anywhere.
 
**That it was not a spontaneous outburst of Hindu fervor became apparent on the main crowing where the Bhagban orphanage is situated. It was set up some years ago by a retired teacher and pastor, Mr. Bhagban Pradhan and after his death, is run by his wife Mohini with the assistance of her daughter and a nephew. Mohini said our days earlier; Lakshmanananda Saraswati had come on one of his numerous trips to the area. He had stopped in front of the Orphanage – nothing more than one semi permanent structure, two long huts which constitute the boys and girls’ dormitories, and a third one as the kitchen. He was annoyed that the orphanage board was right on the road. Saraswati alighted from his SUV and then told Mohini “This Christian hostel should not remain in the middle of the village” on the roadside. That was on 4th July 2009.
"On 8th July at 3 p.m. 15 to 20 people came, armed with staves and weapons, shouting slogans such as "“Kill them, Destroy house”. Mohini said they abused the women and then attacked the cluster of huts of the orphanage. At that time, there were 18 children in the orphanage, four of them girls, the youngest not yet six years of age. “We ran into the forest. There was no other place to go. Eventually we and the children walked 15 kilometers through the forest to reach another village where the children are now staying,” Mohini Pradhan, a frail widow, said.

At the Jesuit house, called Dibyanaugraha, built in 2000 AD, the priests were not home. The Parish Priest, Fr Cornelius, had gone to Jamshedpur some days ago. The assistant Parish Priest, Fr Praful Barla, a young clergymen appointed a few weeks earlier, and who assists in two churches in the region, was staying in the other church. The only person in the house was the cook, 40 year old Jomoj Naik of Kurtumgarh who had been working for the Jesuit fathers for 12 years, even before the new church was built, and who in a nearby village with his wife and children. He had come to the house to feed the three Alsatian dogs which were tied up in the day in their kennel behind the house As the solitary eye witness, Jomoj Naik said "I came to the house as usual at 6 a.m. Fr Praful Barla left at 9;10 for Balliguda to meet the Tehsildar and other officials for permission to build on the land the Church had bought. I made the usual breakfast for the fathers, a vegetarian one. We do not stock meat in the fridge. When asked, I buy mutton from the local butcher, Gore Naik, or chicken from another man. For the dogs, we give them rice mixed with vegetables or raw eggs.
"I fed the dogs, locked the gate ad went home for my own breakfast. I was back in the Jesuit house when at about 2 pm I heard the dogs barking furiously in the kennel. I then saw about 15 or twenty people come through the gate. They had picked up a pick-axe from the compound and they and iron rods with them. They broke open the front grill. By this time, I was frightened, and an opened the wide grill door and ran out to the mangos grove to the parish church some distance away and narrated the violence to my friend, farmer Saninga Bismajhi.

"I and my friend later took courage to return to the Jesuit house at about 2.45 p.m. I saw the damage, the desecration of the chapel with the Cross broken and the bible thrown away. After some time, some people, apparently from Balliguda came with a cameraman. He said he was a pressman, and wanted to know if beef was stored in the house. I said no. "I then went to teacher Cyprian Mondol and told him the incident. I, my son Brahma Naik, friend Rrudirekant Digal a social worker of the New Apostolic Church of the village, went towards the police station. I left my son behind at the canal side ensure the police duration. In front of the police station, we met the Tehsildar, Manoj Kumar Padhi. The sub-inspector of police in charge did not register my complaint, nor did he listen to me. He kept me waiting from 3 pm. to early morning 2 a.m. I asked or food and eater, but it was not given. “Instead, the officer in charge of the police station kept on scolding me in harsh language, abusing me for saying there were 15 or more people who attacked the Jesuit church,. He said he wanted me to say there were only five people who had come to the house. I was finally allowed to go after I pleaded that I was hungry and I had to go and feed the dogs who were also hungry.”**
 
The experience of the Jesuit priests, Fr Praful Barla, was no different from that of his cook. The sub inspector of police insisted that the priest say only five persons had come to his house and chapel in his absence.
It was much later, when the fact finding team went to the police station, and later met the Sub divisional police officer, that the police changed the figure of attackers from five to fifteen.
The Jesuit Fathers said they had some inkling of impending trouble. They said when they were at Balliguda in the office of the revenue inspector for the land issue, the officer told them he had heard there would be a road blockade at 3 p.m.
After spending four hours in the police station, the village, the orphanage an talking to senior police officers, it was quite obvious to us that there was a deliberate attempt to provoke the people of the village who had been spurning the political advances of the VHP and had maintained communal unity and harmony during the December 2007 violence.
It was also quite obvious the local police, particularly the sub inspector, was under tremendous pressure from the VHP to do their will. His notings in the police diary, his tone when speaking of the VHP leader and his repeated attempt even in our presence to coerce the cook and the Jesuit fathers made that clear. In fact it was the presence of the Sub divisional police office and the fact finding team which eventually made him correctly record the statement of the cook.
It is still not clear – the police offer no explanation – why they could not restore law and order and clear the roads. There were only four trees which were blocking the road, and a handful of VHP activists. The police made no effort to prevent activists from forcing people to close shops as far as Nuagoan, 40 kilometers away, where a handful of people even stopped the car of a district official. No forest officer could tell us why there are no cases against people felling government owned and protected timber.
Above all, even though VHP men came to the police station saying they were carrying with them meat they had taken from the Jesuit house, the police say they do not know who attacked the residence and chapel of the Christian priests.
There, of course, have been no arrests in the case. The attackers who made 18 boys and girls of the orphanage run into the forest, who shattered the peace of the village, pillaged the Jesuit residence and desecrated the Chapel remain beyond the pale of law.
The roads of Kandhamal are free only for the SUV of Lakshmanananda Saraswati ad his goons, and for the police who follow him as bodyguards in another jeep.
Released to the Media by John Dayal
 
PRESS STATEMENT - Phulbani, Kandhamal, July 13th, 2008
Justice Basudev Panigrahi Judicial Commission begins Kandhamal anti- Christian violence hearings in Phulbani on 14 July 2008 Archbishop Raphael Cheenath to depose on 15 July
Over 450 affidavits filed by Dalit and Tribal victims, Nuns and
Priests including Rev Pran Parichha, Dr John Dayal. Demand for probe by Central Bureau of Investigation

Mr. Justice Basudev Panigrahi, retired Judge of the Orissa High Court, will begin hearings in Phulbani on 14th July 2007 into the
circumstances of the anti Christian violence that devastated the
Kandhamal district of Orissa, India, during Christmas week 24-27
December 2007.

Over 100 Churches and church institutions including convents and
hostels for boys and girls, over 700 houses and other structures were burnt and pillaged by well trained mobs in a deeply planned and ruthlessly orchestrated wave of violence that engulfed towns and deep villages of the heavily forested plateau in the heart of the state.
Over five thousand Dalits and Tribals, more than 95 per cent of them Christians, were rendered homeless and forced to live in refugee camps. Hundreds are still living in a refuge camp in Barakhama Township.
The one-man Justice Basudev Panigrahi Commission was announced by Orissa State Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in the wake of a national outcry against the communal attacks on the minority community. Over 450 affidavits had been filed before the Commission by the last date of 15th July 2008. At the request of the Church officials and victims, Justice Panigrahi agreed to hold the first sittings in Kandhamal to enable the village people to depose before the Commission.
Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, the Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar diocese which covers Kandhamal, has been asked by Justice Panigrahi to depose on 15th July after the procedures of the Commission are finalized on 14th July.

The Archbishop has called upon the State Government to ensure the security of witnesses, particularly the poor Dalits and Tribals some of who are still not living in their homes out of fear. There have been reports that witnesses who signed their affidavits are facing coercion. This has been conveyed to the State and district authorities by Church leaders, lawyers as well as human rights activists.

Two independent People’s Commissions have also probed the Kandhamal violence, the worst of it kind seen in India ever. Justice Hosbet Suresh and Justice Kolse Patil, both formerly of the Bombay High Court, Director general of Gujarat police RS Sreekumar and famed human rights activist Ms Teesta Setalvad constituted the Independent Tribunal on Kandhamal which toured the district for one week in May 2008, and unearthed serious cases of gender violence and erosion of civil liberties and human rights in various villages. The Commission is expected to submit its report later this month. A Citizens Commission set up by people’s human rights groups in Orissa is also currently in the midst of its hearings, after holding sittings in Kandhamal last week. The Commission, which is chaired by two former judges of the Orissa High Court, together with state intellectuals, is also expected to meet Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and civil and
police authorities, Commission sources have disclosed.

Orissa had in 1999 witnessed the macabre burning to death of Graham Stuart Staines and his two young sons Philip and Timothy as well as Catholic father Arul Doss. The then President of India, Mr. K R Narayanan, had described it as a `blot on the nation’s conscience.’ The mastermind- Dara Singh, is in prison serving a life term for the multiple murders.

The Christian community leaders in their several meetings with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, President Mrs. Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this year had demanded that the State set up a judicial Commission headed by a sitting Judge of the Orissa High Court to go into the roots of the criminal conspiracy to eliminate Christians belonging to all castes, tribes and classes, from the Kandhamal district. They also demanded an enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigations or a Special Investigating Group which would have the credibility and the knowhow to fully unravel the conspiracy and the well-oiled hate machinery which carried out the violence in four days while the Kandhamal district was isolated from the rest of the state and the country, and did it under the eyes of an inept and bigoted District police apparatus.
The National Women’s Commission has also been moved to probe in depth the extent of gender violence. Even our own preliminary reports of interviews conducted by women Supreme Court lawyers have unearthed cases of rape, sexual molestation, sexual threats, and sexual harassment in several villages of Kandhamal from 24 December 2007 till now. There are reports that girls and young women cannot go to school for fear of sexual violence on the forest roads in several villages.
Released to the media for publication/broadcast/telecast by Dr John Dayal, 9811021072 email: johndayal@vsnl.co, catholicunion@gmail.com
For further details, pleased contact: Fr Mrutyunjay, Bishop’s House, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India, and Mobile: 09437644796 email: mjaya_bbsr@yahoo.co.uk;crcdc@satyam.net.in
 
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