International Herald Tribune
Reports: Mobs stone 3 churches in south India
The Associated Press
Published: September 21, 2008
NEW DELHI: Vandals attacked three churches in southern India on Sunday, shattering windows and overturning furniture, news reports said. No casualties were immediately reported.
The attackers pelted the churches in Bangalore with stones, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Local television channels broadcast images of broken windows and the inside of one church in disarray.
Local police in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state, were not immediately available for comment.
The reports did not blame any particular group and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Mobs attacked at least 20 other churches elsewhere in Karnataka last weekend. Police blamed the Hindu radical group Bajrang Dal for those attacks and have since arrested more than 70 Bajrang Dal members, including senior leader Mahendra Kumar.
Police said 34 people including five policemen were injured in that violence.
The attacks in Karnataka follow weeks of Hindu-Christian violence in the eastern state of Orissa that has left at least 25 people dead.
Hindu hard-liners in Orissa claim missionaries force or bribe people to convert to Christianity. The missionaries, who work mostly with poor tribes in the region, deny anyone has been pressured or paid to change their religious beliefs.
Christians account for about 2.5 percent of India's 1.1 billion population, while more than 80 percent of Indians are Hindu.
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