Indian nun, mother arrested for ‘offending’ religion

A Catholic nun and her mother were among five people arrested for allegedly offending religious feelings and promoting enmity between religions after they joined a Mass in the central Indian Chhattisgarh state.

Police arrested newly professed Sister Bibha Kerketta, a member of Daughters of St Anne (DSA) on June 6 night along with her mother, aunt, uncle and a driver from her home at Balachapper village, Jashpur diocese.

“The nun and her family members were booked in a totally false case,” said Father Nirmal Minj, parish priest of the nun’s Shanti Bhavan parish.

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The arrested were kept in the police station at night and were produced before the court the following day, on June 7 evening. The court granted bail to the nun’s uncle but remanded others into judicial custody, Minj said.

Kerketta became a professed nun in December and the family “celebrated a thanksgiving Mass at her home,” Minj told UCA News on June 8.

“Close family members, priests and nuns from the locality attended the Mass and had a fellowship meal as well,” he said.

Soon after the guests left, some 20 men, some of them from the nearby villages, forced their way into her home and started abusing them, the priest said.

“They slapped her mother and threw away the Bible, candle stand, and rosary,” Minj said.

“The men also questioned why they became Christian and threatened them. Soon the police arrived and took five of them to the police station,” he said.

The court on June 8 agreed to take up their bail application on June 13, the priest said.

“It is very sad. We don’t understand how Mass is portrayed as something creating enmity between people of other religions,” the priest regretted.

The Congress party, which claims to uphold India’s secular credentials, rules the state. But Christians continue to face serious violence and harassment at the hands of Hindu activists.

Sectarian violence displaced more than 1,000 indigenous Christians in the state’s Maoist-infested Bastar region since August 2022.

Christians allege that organized attacks against them forced many to flee from their villages. Their assaulters looted their houses, farm animals and crops.

Christians were also denied permission to bury their dead in the villages forcing them to carry the bodies to the distant government or other Church cemeteries for funerals.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel had assured action against those behind the violence against Christians, but Church leaders said the situation of Christians remains grim.

Father John Crus Minj, the secretary to the Jashpur bishop condemned the attack on the nun, her family members and others.

Crus Minj said they will appeal to the state government to take immediate action and stop the harassment of Christians.

Christians make up less than 2 percent of the 30 million people in the state, which is mostly tribal-dominated.

 

This article is first published in https://www.ucanews.com/