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Two priests and two nuns from Kerala, along with a church assistant, were assaulted, allegedly by a mob of Bajrang Dal workers on Wednesday, August 6, in Odisha’s Gangadarpur village. The priests, Father Jojo Vaidyakaran and Father Lijo Nirappel, have been serving under the Balasore Diocese. The mob first started assaulting the assistant, accusing them of forced religious conversions.
Speaking to TNM from Odisha, Fr Jojo, who has been serving in the state for the last 40 years, said that a huge mob was waiting in the dark when they came out after a prayer service in the village. “I went to the diocese as part of a feast, and after that, Fr Lijo asked me to stay back in his parish to spend the day. He invited me to visit the village, as two brothers there died last year and the families wanted us to conduct prayers and a mass,” he said.
The priests had planned to leave for the village by 4.30 pm, but heavy rains forced them to wait. “Since it was getting late, we planned to postpone the prayers, but the villagers insisted, and we reached there at around 6 pm,” he added.
The prayers were held at the graves of the deceased, located in the compounds of their respective homes. A mass followed the service, in memory of the two brothers, attended by families.
“We had dinner with them, spoke for a while, and decided to return by 9 pm. A few minutes after we stepped out, we saw a mob approaching us. We had no clue what was happening outside as we were in prayers,” Fr Jojo said.
He further said that Durjau, the church assistant, was brutally assaulted. “We were pushed and thrashed,” he recalled. As the abuse escalated, some villagers managed to escort the nuns back to their village, where they had to wait until past midnight to return to their convent.
The attackers also snatched Fr Lijo’s and their car driver’s mobile phones, while the nuns and others managed to hide their phones in the vehicle. “We were blocked and abused for about 40 minutes. By then, the police came. When police arrived, the majority of them left. The remaining people complained to the police that we came for conversion,” Fr Jojo said.
This attack comes barely 10 days after two Catholic nuns were arrested in Chhattisgarh over alleged charges of conversion, in a separate incident.
On Saturday, July 26, two nuns from the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate (ASMI) were detained at Durg Railway Station along with a young man while accompanying three women aged 18–19 from Narayanpur district. They were charged under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Chhattisgarh Religious Freedom Act, 1968, on allegations of human trafficking and religious conversion.
A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Bilaspur on Saturday, August 2, granted bail to the two Kerala-based nuns and their co-accused. The arrests had followed a complaint filed by a local Bajrang Dal functionary.