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Not much has been heard about the case since the Reverend Abraham Soreng of Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jharkhand was found in Rourkela in the neighbouring state of Orissa, his throat slit with a knife on May 6, this year. The body was found near a railway bridge, the police said.
The priest had come to Rourkela apparently to meet the Ranchi Bishop, a meeting fixed for the next day. He had not been robbed, and his mobile phone helped establish his identity.
The body was buried in his home village of Kadma in the Jharkhand’s Kunti district, where Christians number more than a fifth of the population of half a million. The Catholic news agency UCAN quoted the investigating police officer, Mr. Ranveer Singh, who had examined the body, saying that the pastor was probably a victim of a conspiracy.
One would not be surprised that the state governments now come out with some theory pinning the murder on Muslims, or even Christians. That is par for the course for Jharkhand, and the three other central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, all three ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and Orissa where a former BJP ally, the Biju Janata Dal, has been in power for a decade and a half.
The four states, which form the core of the Tribal homeland in the heart of the Indian subcontinent, have had more than their share of violence targeting the Christian community in rural areas and forest villages. Itinerant pastors leading them in worship or working with them in development activities are particular targets, as are small home churches where local families come together in prayer.
Community leaders of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in particular, are agreed that there has been a perceptible intensification of targeting of the community, though it does not always end up in murder. There has been a flexing of muscle by aggressive members of local organisations which claim allegiance to the Sangh Parivar. And part of the strategy is to polarise the various tribal segments, rousing local youth in particular against the Christians who may be first generation converts or older communities.
Mourners attend the funeral service of the Rev. Abraham Soreng, who was found murdered May 6, at Goosner Evangelical Lutheran Church on May 7 in Kadma village of Jharkhand state. Image: ucanews.com
The pastor’s murder has got a sharp response from the Catholic Bishop’s conference secretary general, Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, who is also an Auxiliary Bishop of Ranchi under Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, one of the four Catholic Cardinals in India. “Any act of violence is condemnable, when it comes to a religious person, it is more condemnable. Efforts are underway to polarise the population in the state, which is not going to help anybody,” Bishop Mascarenhas has said.
The police response across the tribal belt can be unpredictable. In some areas, often, posses of policemen have accompanied local political thugs hell-bent on “teaching the Christians a lesson”. Often enough, also, the gangs come accompanied also by local stringers of the print and television media. Such has been the case in the earlier violent disruption of a marriage ceremony in a church in Madhya Pradesh.
Equally disturbing is the manner in which the police register what are called cross cases against the victim Christians and the members of the aggressive group attacking them. This effectively puts the small Christian community of the area under great duress, ultimately making them withdraw the complaints against those who beat them up and stopped their worship service,
Recently, the local media made much of how two persons, allegedly of the local Hindutva groups who had vandalised a church in Chhattisgarh's Bastar in April and attempted to set its pastor and his pregnant wife afire, were granted bail by a local court “because the pastor said he had forgiven them.”
Mriyam Borai, 32, and Akash Singh, 27, were arrested setting fire to the small church in Karanji Matagudi Para village and pouring petrol on the pastor and his seven month pregnant wife on April 17. The couple was fortunately unhurt and managed to escape. In march last year, the state had seen several villages pass orders banning the entry of Christians after a sustained campaign against “missionaries” by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The state had remained a mute spectator to these unconstitutional methods.
This is not the first such bizarre cased of the lower judiciary attempting to minimise or to trivialise serious crimes, including attempted murder.
Chhatisgarh indeed has multiple layers of violence, targeting the tribals and Dalits in general, but also lawyers trying to come to their aid, and the local media which is terrorised into silence. The State inaction has aggravated the situation. The on-going confrontation between the state security forces and the Maoists in Bastar provides the backdrop for state impunity and the lack of interest shown by national media to cover violence against the Christian community and other marginalised groups.
The Evangelical Fellowship of India in its recent reports of targeted anti Christian violence in 2015 has noted that “topping the list of 177 cases are the States of Madhya Pradesh with 36 cases, and its neighbour, Chhattisgarh, 20 cases, , and Uttar Pradesh, with 22 cases. The first three months of 2016 registered 55 verified incidents of hate crimes targeting Christians in 16 states throughout the country. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 10 incidents, followed by Maharashtra with 7 incidents. Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand followed this with 5 each, and by Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Uttarakhand with 4 each.”
The actual volume of violent persecution is not known, the EFI said. “State agencies are reluctant to speak on this matter and governments do not keep records unless local police register formal cases under the Indian Penal and Criminal Procedure codes.”