Rajasthan: Attack on preacher - A national-level fact-finding team

(The Hindu
May 04, 2007)


Attack on preacher: panel dismayed

Special Correspondent

`BJP fora leading hate campaign'

JAIPUR: A national-level fact-finding team of human rights organisations and Christian bodies, which visited the State capital to probe last week's attack on the preacher, Walter Massey, on Thursday expressed its fears over a "Gujarat-like situation" developing in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Rajasthan in the near future.

The BJP front organisations, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, were at present leading a hate campaign against Christians in the whole of Udaipur division, adjoining Gujarat, and in parts of Ajmer and Jaipur, with the tacit support of the administration, it said.

"The pattern of violence indicates a design. The attacks on Christians are never in the form of communal clashes as they are targeted against a micro minority in the State. There is enough evidence available in many places for the police to take suo motu action against the VHP, Bajrang Dal and Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad but no action is taken. Some of the Indian States are now seemingly ruled under a separate set of law," John Dayal, member, National Integration Council and the All India Christian Council, told journalists.

The fact-finding team, including Teesta Setelvad, social activist, Abraham Mathai, vice-president, Minorities Commission, Maharashtra, and Sister Mary Scaria, Supreme Court lawyer, besides Kavita Srivastava, general secretary of the Rajasthan PUCL, Sawai Singh of the Sadbhavana Manch and Engineer Mohammed Saleem of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, met the victim's family and attended the court proceedings.