Author: Indo-Asian News Service
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: May 30, 2004
URL: in.news.yahoo.com/040530/43/2ddw2.html
Police in Orissa have arrested a
pastor and his associate for allegedly trying to convert Hindus to Christianity,
officials here said Sunday.
Pastor Subash Samal and Dhaneswar
Kandi were arrested in Kilipal village in the coastal district of Jagastsinghpur,
80 km from here.
Police have charged them with hurting
the religious sentiments of others and with violating laws that prohibit
religious conversion by fraudulent means.
Samal and Kandi had allegedly offered
Rs.50,000 (more than a $1,000) to a man to change his religion, a senior
police official said.
Kilipal, which has a population
of about 500, has some 17 Christian families. The rest of its population
are Hindus.
The village also has around 200
Dalits. Samal, a member of the underprivileged community, converted to
Christianity about 10 years ago and was pastor in the village church.
Police said he was persuading other
people of the village to convert to Christianity.
Because of his efforts, about eight
Dalit families adopted Christianity last year. In the first week of February,
however, a group of Hindu residents re-converted them to Hinduism at a
religious ceremony.
The group also tonsured seven women
at the time.
The incident created ripples after
Samal and his associates brought the tonsured women from Kilipal to state
capital Bhubaneswar to highlight their suffering before the media.
On the basis of complaints by the
women, police arrested six people from the village. Local Hindu leaders
opposed the arrest, describing the action as partial.
They demanded the arrest of Samal
and Kandi, claiming they had reportedly converted more than 17 people through
fraudulent means in the last two years.
"Samal and his associate were absconding
and we could not arrest them earlier," a senior police official said.
"We arrested them on Saturday when
they came to a police station to record their statement in the incident."
Orissa has witnessed numerous violent
incidents over religious conversions in the last few years, including the
killing of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two minor
sons by a group of Hindu fanatics in 1999.
