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Attack on Christian Family Part of Hindu Campaign | Sant Lal Saket sustained severe injuries on his left hand.
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On March 22, at around noon, a group of nine men from Bahera village came to Brij Gopal Saket’s doorstep, armed with rods and sticks and stones, and very drunk. Shouting slogans, they claimed that they were Bajrang Dal (Hindu extremist) activists.
They were very abusive and violent and demanded that Brij Gopal hand over his daughters to them for their pleasure. When Brij Gopal tried to tell them that they were drunk and they should go home, they became even more abusive and charged at him. Brij Gopal and his two daughters managed to run inside their house, but his elderly father and mother and his sister were not able to get to safety.
The men attacked these people viciously with rods and sticks and stones. Brij Gopal’s father, Sant Lal Saket, sustained severe injuries on his left hand, with a possible fracture of the middle finger. He had been very sick for the past four months, which compounded the problem.
Brij Gopal’s sister, Michva, was also beaten mercilessly and sustained severe head injuries.
Along with other injuries to her head and body, his mother, Hirawa, who is around 60 years old, suffered the worst injury, as one of the stones smashed the bridge of her nose.
| | Michva sustained severe head injuries. |
After the assailants ran off leaving the victims bleeding outside the house, people from the village came and helped transport the injured to the nearest primary health center at Naigarhi, which is about 15 kilometers from their village. A report was lodged at the police station at Naigarhi, registered as Complaint No. 47/08, under the sections 294, 323, 506(b) and section 34 of the Indian Penal Code. The complaint was not finalized at that time because the police were waiting for the medical report to decide if further charges should be added.
The names of the assailants recorded in the complaint are: Bhagwandeen, Jagdish, Kanhai (all sons of Daulu), Somnath (son of Raghunath), Ramesh, Suresh (both sons of Bhagwandeen), Shivpal (son of Vishram), Mohan Lal (son of Auseri) and Gopilal (son of Ram Prasad). All of them belong to the Saket community.
Open Doors visited the family and prayed with them, and the visit influenced the doctors and the police to take the family's plight seriously. Along with this, Open Doors sent many letters to the Minority Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Human Resources Development ministry and the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Open Doors is arranging for a legal remedy and also is dealing with past attacks on Christians in this village that were not known before this attack.
BackgroundThis is the third attack over the past year on a group of about 40 people who have put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The first attack was on July 15, 2007, and the First Information Report (FIR) for this incident was registered on July 17, 2007. The most recent attack was on January 17, 2008, and the FIR was registered on the same day.
 | The three men in front--Lal Mani Saket, Sant Lal Saket and Shyamlal Saket--are members of the group of 40 who have begun to believe as Christians.
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The Christian victims and the assailants belong to the Saket community, whose residents are considered untouchables by the High Caste Hindus as they belong to the Scheduled Castes under the Constitution of India. They are poor, landless laborers who live barely at the sustenance level. They have no political or social influence.
The victims are part of a movement which began two years ago, when one of their community, Ram Mani Saket, had an experience of deliverance from evil spirits and came to believe in Christ. He began to share his belief with his community and others began to also believe in Christ. This upset the local leaders of Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindu fundamentalist organization. The leaders, Shrikant Tomar and Subhash Gupta (both belonging to high castes), began a systematic campaign of terror and intimidation against the victims.
They wooed some of the people of the Saket community of that village and made them members of the Bajrang Dal. They instigated a reign of terror on the Christian group, which involved ongoing life-threats, refusal to allow them to fill water from the government-installed hand pump in their village, and constant harassment of the women. The Hindu extremists have repeatedly said to the believers that the group must stop worshipping Jesus and join Bajrang Dal or “we will kill you all.”
Points of ConcernShrikant Tomar and Subhash Gupta claim political connections and influence. They are officers of Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council). They have continually recruited and trained some of the people of the same caste as the Christians, giving them drinks and promising them protection against any action taken by the authorities. These two leaders know that if they personally get involved in the campaign of terror and intimidation against the Christians, then there is likely to be an uproar on the caste issue (which is very volatile, especially with the elections to the State Assembly coming up.) Also they are liable to be prosecuted under the SC/ST Act, which provides special protection to the people under that category.
In the first two cases when there was no real action taken by the authorities, the Hindu extremists were encouraged in their acts of violence.
The local police are trying to imply that this incident was a personal feud between two groups of people under the influence of alcohol, on the occasion of Holi, and are not seeing it as a deliberate and planned attempt to curtail the religious and conscientious liberties of the Christian group of people by the groups who claim to represent the interests of the majority community. It is likely that the assailants, who themselves are poor and helpless, will languish in prison, while the Hindu extremist leaders will not be prosecuted and will be free to plot more atrocities.
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