Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) has called on the Lok Sabha Speaker to expunge remarks of a member against Graham Stuart Staines who was burned to death along with his two sons, in Odisha, eastern India, 21 years ago. The Christian community in India is deeply distressed at the remarks Satya Pal Singh made on September 21, during a debate on Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2020, EFI general secretary Reverend Vijayesh Lal said in a press release. Singh had alleged that the NGO of Staines was converting people to Christianity and local tribals were upset with him. “There was uproar over Graham Staines. What happened to him and his two children was wrong. But CBI, Odisha Crime Branch and the Justice D P Wadhwa Commission probe concluded that tribals were being converted there. It was the biggest reason that people turned against him,” said Singh, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party from the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the native place of Dara Singh who had led the mob that torched Staines. Staines was an EFI and worked among leprosy patients in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district. Reverend Lal said Singh’s remarks injured “the memory of a person who gave his best years in

Claim of January 8 plot to time riots with Trump's visit dropped, Delhi Police now says entire anti-CAA protest was part of 'terrorist' plot to engineer large-scale riots 'at suitable time', with the 'conspirators' seeking to 'reclaiming

A church planter in India’s Maharashtra state was brutally killed by Hindu extremists after suffering years of abuse for his Christian faith amid escalating religious intolerance and violence in the country. Persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reports that on July 10, unknown Hindu extremists murdered Pastor Munsi Thado, 35, and left his body in the forest near Badpari village in the Godcharoli district of Maharashtra state. The Hindus reportedly dragged the pastor from his home, ignoring his wife Rajini’s pleas for his life to be spared. In the five years preceding his death, Pastor Munsi lived in the forest near Badpari village due to village pressure. Village leaders angered by Munsi’s evangelistic efforts demanded he recant his Christian faith. When the pastor refused to comply with their demands, he was chased out of the village. Following his ostracism from his community, Munsi, who was part of a Maoist separatist group prior to his conversion to Christianity, continued to evangelize, leading nearly two dozen families to Christ.  “He was killed because of his faith, life, and ministry to the Adivasi people in the area,” one of his colleagues told ICC. “He led more than 20 families to Christ in the last five years, ever since he was thrown

A woman in India who had recently converted to Christianity was brutally murdered by four youths associated with a Hindu fanatic group, marking the fifth religiously motivated killing of a Christian in the country in less than two months. UCA News reports that four youths were arrested in connection with the murder of a Christian woman, Suman Munda, 25, killed in Redhadi, a village in Khunti district, on July 19. A local pastor who requested anonymity told International Christian Concern that Munda converted to Christianity six years ago. After learning of her conversion, radical Hindu nationalists started harassing her.  When relatives visited Munda’s house they could not find her, they later discovered her body at a deserted place near her home. “I suspect that it is the handiwork of a Hindu fanatic group. Christians here have been facing a serious threat from it. The fanatic group is asking us to go back to Hinduism. We are scared and our people are shattered,” Bishop Binay Kandulna of Khunti told UCA News. Last month, Ramji Munda, 27, was murdered in the same district. Villagers believe the Christian man was killed by an anti-Pathalgadi group that safeguards tribal people’s rights. “It is a matter of serious concern because the state

Assailants threaten to kill Christians if they do not leave village. Punita Kumari was caring for her family in eastern India the morning of Sept. 14 when leaders of about 25 hard-line Hindu assailants armed with bamboo sticks forced their way into their one-room home. Saying Christians could not live in their village of Jhikatia, Bihar state, the assailants dragged her husband, Pastor Vinouwa Das, out and began beating him, Kumari said. His sister tried to shield him, and they beat her too, she said. Kumari gathered up her newborn and rushed out, pleading with the assailants to talk about any grievances rather than attack, but they ignored her, she said. “They shouted at me that we must vacate the premises immediately, and that they will not allow Christian services in the village,” Kumari told Morning Star News. “They were furious and beat me up also with the wooden sticks. It was not even a month since I was out of labor. My newborn also suffered injuries along with me.” Among the assailants: members of the once-Christian family who had granted them land for their home and a one-room church building, as hard-line Hindus had pressured them to renounce Christianity and reclaim the land, she

The state had witnessed the lynching of several tribal people and Muslims on unsubstantiated charges of cow slaughter or beef possession during the tenure of its previous BJP-led govt Seven tribal Christians were allegedly beaten, partially tonsured and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” in a Jharkhand village on the unproven allegation that they had slaughtered a cow. Although the incident happened on September 16 and a police complaint was lodged the next day, the matter became public only on September 25 when former zilla parishad member and social activist Neel Justin Beck told a local news portal about it. Police confirmed the incident. Shams Tabrez, the superintendent of police in Simdega district where the attack took place, said four of the nine accused named in the FIR had been arrested and the rest would be picked up soon. The FIR also mentions 10 unnamed accused. Jharkhand had witnessed the lynching of several tribal people and Muslims on unsubstantiated charges of cow slaughter or beef possession during the tenure of its previous BJP-led government (2014-19). This is the first reported communal attack since the JMM-Congress-RJD-Left alliance came to power last December. Deepak Kullu, 26, a tribal Christian from Bherikudar in Simdega, about 145km southwest of

Some 14 Christian homes are almost destroyed. Hindutva followers want to ban Christian residents from their villages in Chhattisgarh unless they go back to Hinduism. Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Dozens of Christians have been expelled from Kakdabeda, Tiliyabeda and Singanpur, a group of villages in Kondagaon district (Chhattisgarh). Yesterday around 11 am, a group of Hindu nationalists attacked and vandalised 14 Christian homes, shacks built with flimsy wooden poles and tin roofs. On the same day, more than 1,500 villagers, egged on by nationalist groups, gathered in Singanpur to protest. Many threatened Christians, telling them not to return to their village, but go elsewhere. These incidents follow Tuesday’s attack against Shivaram Koyam, a Christian from the village of Kakdabeda, whose home was torn down. Law enforcement and local officials have tried to pacify the villagers without success. Hindu villagers say that if Christians want to return to live with them, they must return to honour local [Hindu] gods. The State of Chhattisgarh has had an anti-conversion law since 2000. For Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), “The bogey of forced conversions preached by Hindutva extremists serves to sow inequities, suspicions and even hatred towards weak tribal Christians. Being a tribal Christian means a

A Muslim man in northern India beheaded his Hindu wife one-and-a-half months after their marriage because she refused to convert to Islam, a local newspaper reported. Police this week found the beheaded body of the 23-year-old victim, identified as Priya Soni, in a forest area near Preet Nagar area of Sonbhadra district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, according to The Tribune. The suspect, Soni's husband who was identified as Ejaz Ahmed, and his friend, identified only as Shoaib, have been arrested. Police said they recovered the mobile phone of the victim, a knife and an iron rod from the suspects. The district's police chief, Ashish Srivastava, was quoted as saying that officers used social media to identify the woman's body. Her father, Laxminarayan, identified her from her shoes and clothes. Priya married Ahmed against the wishes of the family and was being pressured to convert to Islam, police said, adding that they were considering charging the accused under the stringent National Security Act. While religion is a sensitive issue in India, such incidents are rare in the country, where Hindus constitute about 80% of the population of more than 1.3 billion people. India also has the world's third-largest Muslim population — after Indonesia and Pakistan. The

Animists incited by Hindu extremists as police stand by. Incited by Hindu extremists, thousands of tribal animists in Chhattisgarh, India last week drove Christians in three villages from their homes in assaults that police declined to prevent or stop in spite of prior warnings, sources said. The attacks on Sept. 22-23 by mobs that swelled to more than 3,000 agitators damaged homes, sent Christians fleeing for their lives and left a woman hospitalized with serious injuries, but police officers’ only response was to pressure Christians to contribute to the Hindu festivals that were the touch point of the hostilities. Sivram Koyam, a resident of Kakadbeda in Kondagaon District, said he and other Christians were at the local police station on Sept. 22 trying to warn officers of impending violence when they received calls from relatives saying fierce mobs were attacking their homes. “From three in the afternoon till eight in the night, I pleaded with and begged the police officers to go and stop them, but they did not go,” Koyam told Morning Star News. “The furious mob came in search of me, and not finding me home, they picked up my wife and smashed her on the ground three times.” The mob of about

In a six-hour operation led by government officials on September 23, 15 crosses were removed from Susai Paliya Hill in Chikkaballapur, Karnataka. The operation was conducted following the order from Karnataka High Court that found the crosses illegally placed on government land without prior approval from authorities. More than 300 police and revenue officials gathered at St. Joseph's Church in Susai Palya and removed a 32-meter cross that was on the hilltop along with 14 other seven-meter crosses that were on the way to the hilltop. According to local parish priest Father Antony Britto Rajan, "The government officials acted arbitrarily without any prior notice." "We have been using the space for more than five decades for praying the Way of the Cross, especially during the Lenten season," he told UCA News. The local parish mentioned that people from other religions also visited the hill for prayer but "there was no problem from anybody." Though the police officials claimed to be following the court orders, they did not show any such order, said Father Rajan. The Christian leader plans to appeal against the court decision and take legal action to restore the crosses. But, he admits that finding the necessary documents may be difficult. Peter Machado, Archbishop of Bangalore,