Title: 'Church backing
Tripura rebels'
Author: Subir Bhaumik
in Calcutta
Publication: BBC News
Date: April 18, 2000
The government in India's
north-eastern state of Tripura says it has evidence that the state's Baptist
Church is involved in backing separatist rebels.
Tripura Chief Minister
Manik Sarkar said state police had uncovered details of the alleged link
after questioning a church leader.
Nagmanlal Halam, secretary
of the Noapara Baptist Church in Tripura, was arrested late on Monday with
a large quantity of explosives.
Mr Sarkar said that allegations
about the close links between the state's Baptist Church and the rebel
National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) have long been made by political
parties and police.
Now for the first time,
he said, hard evidence supporting the allegations had been found.
Explosives
Mr Sarkar told the BBC
that Mr Halam was found in possession of more than 50 gelatine sticks,
5kg of potassium and 2kg of sulphur and other ingredients for making explosives.
Chief Minister Sarkar
says he has proof
He said that two other
junior members of the same church, arrested last week, had tipped the police
off about the explosives which were meant for the NLFT rebels.
The chief minister said
that Mr Halam confessed to buying and supplying explosives to the NLFT
for the past two years.
Another church official,
Jatna Koloi, was arrested in south Tripura last week.
Police say Mr Koloi had
received training in guerrilla warfare at an NLFT base last year.
Conversion
Guards have been placed
outside the headquarters of the Baptist Church in Tripura's capital, Agartala,
to prevent possible attacks on it once the news of Mr Halam's arrest spread.
The NLFT is accused of
forcing Tripura's indigenous tribes to become Christians and give up Hindu
forms of worship in areas under their control.
Last year, they issued
a ban on the Hindu festivals of Durga Puja and Saraswati Puja.
The NLFT manifesto says
that they want to expand what they describe as the kingdom of God and Christ
in Tripura.
The Baptist Church in
Tripura was set up by missionaries from New Zealand 60 years ago.
It won only a few thousand
converts until 1980 when in the aftermath, of the state's worst ethnic
riot, the number of conversions grew.
