Syed Khalique Ahmed
NEW DELHI—An attack on a Church on October 3 at Solanipuram, an upmarket residential area in Roorkee, has revealed that attackers on minorities in India are not fringe elements and illiterate people. Roorkee in Uttarakhand is known for being one of the oldest IITs in the country.
Victims of the violence say the attackers are highly educated people from the mainstream connected with right-wing organizations with radical ideology.
One of the attackers on the Church and the Christian community at Solanipuram is a school principal. She has been identified as Seema Goel in her mid-forties in the FIR lodged by Prio Sadhna Lance, who manages the Church. The accused, according to FIR, hail from Bajrang Dal, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
While narrating about the violence at the release of a fact-finding report on the “Christians under Attack in India” at a press meet at the Press Club of India here on Thursday, victims also spoke about the police’s indifference.
Almost three weeks have passed since the incident took place, police have not arrested even a single culprit. The weakness of the police indicates why the perpetrators feel encouraged to indulge in physical attacks on minorities.
The report has been prepared jointly by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), United Christian Forum, and United Against Hate.
Many people were left injured, including women. One of the seriously injured is still undergoing treatment in a hospital at Dehradun.
Eva Lance, a former student of Delhi University’s St. Stephens’s College, speaking at the fact-finding report release function, said that the female principal badly beat her up. As in other attacks on Churches, the Christians in Roorkee were also accused of indulging in religious conversion.
Eva said that her family, who look after the Church, were being threatened by the locals for several days before the mob attack.
There was suspicious activity near the Church at least four times before the attack on Sunday (October 3). “We received hateful anti-Christian threats by unknown men who followed us on Wednesday before the attack. They accused us of conversion and threatened violence. I had sent an e-mail to the SP rural, visited the police station, and registered a formal complaint with the police on October 2. The police assured us of security, but no help came at the attack time though we kept calling the police. Finally, the police came one hour after the mob dispersed,” she told journalists.
She said that there were about 300-400 fanatics in the mob, a quarter of them women, mostly locals and some from outside. They were raising slogans like “Jai Shri Ram and Har Har Mahadev.
Eva said that a 50-plus year-old-man caught her younger sister Pearl Lance, a software engineer, while a 30-year-old young man molested her and some women slapped and abused her. They also beat her on the chest. The attackers also snatched her mobile phone. Eva’s 65-year-old mother was also brutally assaulted by the fanatics.
“I had never seen those men. Instead, they held me tightly while the women abused and attacked me, and the man stole my phone and molested me,” Pearl alleged in her statement given to the fact-finding team.
Eva said that the mob also badly attacked Rajat Kumar, a helper at the Church. He was beaten with iron rods on the first floor of the Church and dragged to the ground floor.
The mob, Eva said, chopped off one of the ears of a 12-year-old boy who was a little distance away. He was bleeding profusely and screaming for help. “I took out my car to shift him to hospital. But the mob did not give way to reach up to the boy. So I requested everyone to let me take him to the hospital, but nobody obliged. I also requested neighbours to help me provide medical treatment to the boy, but no one helped me,” Eva narrated her tale of woe. “The boy had become unconscious, but the extremists were smiling and taunting at our plight,” she said.
St Stephen’s former student said the mob armed with sticks and rods invaded the Church at 10 am, the same time when service starts at the Church, indicating it was a planned attack. During 40 minutes of the episode, Eva said the fanatics vandalized everything-chairs, walls, religious symbols, and musical instruments. In addition, they destroyed CCTV cameras and took away DVR to ensure that no digital evidence was available against them.
Another woman victim Akshi told the fact-finding team that the miscreants pulled her hair and slapped her. Then, the mob attacked her husband Sumit and forced him to hand over DVR.
Eva said that the mob had snatched mobile phones and cash from most people. “I tried to call up the police. But nobody answered. The police reached the spot after one hour of the incident, “she said.
She said that when she went to the police to lodge the FIR, police told her that the pastor indulged in conversion. This indicated the sympathies of the police with the accused persons.
Police registered complaints against some named accused and others unnamed, but they charged them under bailable offences only.
Eva said that a day after, she realized that police registered non-bailable offences against her mother, accusing her of indulging in dacoity and attempting to murder.
“We are now receiving all kinds of unpleasant comments from the neighbours. They ask people not to visit us. Yeh isai hain, in ko nikal phenko. (They are Christians. Throw them out). We get such comments daily from the locals,” Eva said.
“We feel as if we don’t belong to this place,” Eva narrated. “Is conversion a crime in India? EVA SAID THAT even ISCKON people converted people in foreign countries and brought them to India to train in Hinduism,” Eva said.
She demanded a fair and impartial probe into the incident.
AC Micheal of the United Christian Forum (UCF), addressing the press meet, said that a total of 305 incidents of attacks against Christians were reported in 273 days of 2021. September 2021, he said, witnessed the highest number of incidents, that is, 69.
He said that North Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh together recorded 169 incidents of attacks against Christians in the last nine months.
As many as 32 incidents were recorded in Karnataka, the highest in South Indian states.
As many as 1331 women were injured in these incidents, with 588 tribals and 513 Dalits becoming victims. And a total of 28 Churches were damaged, including one that was demolished in Delhi by the government.
He said that the attacks in almost all the cases were on the pretext of the Christian priests indulging in conversion. Many fresh cases of conversion were filed against the priests this year.
Stating that nine states, most of them under BJP rule, had passed freedom of religion laws that were basically anti-conversion laws.
Michael said that while the Church was being targeted, the government gave complete freedom to Hindu organizations indulging in Ghar-wapsi (converting non-Hindus to Hinduism)..
“If the government wants to ban conversion, they should amend the Constitution and ban it for everybody,” he demanded.
President of Unity in Compassion Ms. Minakshi Singh pointed out that the Christian community was being accused of carrying out ‘conversions’ on a large scale, but numbers stated otherwise. Over the years, a reduction in the Christian population has been noted. The share of the Christian population in India came down from 2.6 percent in 2005 to 2.3 percent in 2011.
Nadeem Khan representing APCR, Compared the state’s attitude towards attacks on minorities in India and Bangladesh. Although he said that the Bangladesh government arrested more than 400 persons suspected of being involved in attacks on Hindus and their temples, accused engaged in attacks on minorities in India were not arrested. “The Indian government is ‘protecting’ these groups as if they belong to a party,” he alleged. He pointed out that this non-responsive government must be questioned.
Senior journalist Prashant Tandon spoke about the modus operandi of the attacks on minorities. He pointed that either RSS or any of its sub-groups first put allegations of conversion against minorities. “Later, they are attacked, and there is no action taken against these acts of violence,” Tandon stated.
