Hindu extremists attack Pastor in Madya Pradesh
From our correspondent
TextA group of Hindu extremists belonging to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) attacked a pastor in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh on 4 December 2005. The police declined to detain any of the militant Hindus. Instead they detained the pastor for more than 10 hours for “disrupting public peace”.
Pastor Anil Mehra of the Indian Evangelical Team (IET) had just started the worship service in his rented house at 10.30 am when a neighbour identified as Raju came and disrupted the meeting, according to Biju Varghese, IET coordinator of Jhabua district.
Mehra lives at Jhabua’s Bhabra sub-district. There were only seven people in his house when the attack took place. “Soon a leader of the RSS Inder Singh Dawar came with a group of about 15 people and started beating him,” Varghese said. The extremists struck Mehra on his head and punched him all over. Uggar Singh, a resident of nearby Temachi village, allegedly threatened to slit Mehra’s throat.
When Mehra told the attackers that he was conducting a meeting peacefully in his own rented house, they dragged him out. The also forced others, including his wife and children, to come out. The assailants asked Mehra to lock the house and sit quietly on the verandah. They then called the police and accused him of noise violations. When two policemen came, they also beat up Mehra. Then they took him on their motorbike to the Bhabra police station, where he was locked up for more than two hours.
At 3.30 pm, the police took him on a motorcycle to the Tehsildar of Jobat, about 100 km from Bhabra. As the police and Mehra reached Jobat at 6 pm, they were informed that the Tehsildar of Bhabra had returned. The police then brought Mehra back to Bhabra. At the official’s residence, the police took Mehra’s signature on a blank paper and asked him to appear on 12 December 2005 for a hearing with a witness and a guarantor for his bail. He was then released.
When contacted, head constable Devi Singh denied that Mehra was attacked. “Some local villagers complained that Mehra was disturbing them by making a lot of noise, and therefore we detained him,” he said. “But no one beat him up and no organisation is behind it.”
Singh however said the police had tied Mehra’s hands while taking him to Jobat. “There was a crowd protesting against Mehra so we were compelled to tie his hands to maintain peace,” he said. Station house officer Arti Rana was not available for any comment.