Wednesday, May 25, to kill Christian missionaries unless they stop their activities. The announcement came just days after an Orissa Supreme Court overturned the death penalty given to Dara Singh for his involvement in the murders of Australian Missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons Philip and Timothy in 1999.
Instead, Singh received life imprisonment along with another Hindu militant, while 11 other suspects were acquitted Thursday, May 19. In statements to local media here, an Orissa leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s national Hindu party, praised Singh’s crime. "I support the revolutionary attitude of Dara Singh," said the leader, Nibedita Pradhan, who is also mayor of the town of Cuttack.
"I will support him always because of his courage," she added. Pradhan said, Christian missionaries are "creating law and order problems in the state" and engage in what she called the "conversion of Hindu’s" into Christians. "That should be stopped," Pradhan told reporters, "otherwise more numbers of Dara Singh will be created and attacks on missionaries will be repeated."
LAWYER ANGRY
In a first reaction, a lawyer of the Orissa High Court, Nishikant Mishra, condemned Pradhan’s threats saying it was contradictory to her mission as an elected official. She "is the head of the city council and elected by people. So supporting a terrorist is a crime," he said in a statement monitored by the BosNewsLife Orissa Bureau.
Yet Pradhan is apparently not the only influential Hindu supporting violence against missionaries. Other local BJP officials, Baidhar Mallik and Pratap Sarangi, also expressed support for attacks against active Christians and missionaries.
There are indications that the main suspect in the killing of the Australian missionary and his two children, Dara Singh, is emerging as an Hindu leader as he is often mentioned in Indian media outlets. BJP leaders cay they believe Singh will soon be released from prison because "there is no evidence against him."
ARMED GROUP
In the past, Singh denied involvement in a platform of Hindu groups, known as the Rastriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, which has close ties to the BJP. However an armed group supporting Singh, the Dara Sena, has made clear it wants to participate in politics and possibly merge with the BJP party, BosNewsLife learned.
Church groups have expressed concern about the situation in Orissa, where militants have begun distributing weapons among Hindu’s in what is seen as an attempt to intimidate the Christian population, BosNewsLife reporters established. (Satya Sundar Mishra as BosNewsLife India Reporter based in Orissa. Mishra, 26, is a Development Journalist of Orissa working on social and religious issues that are not yet on the radar screen of media and politicians. He has been working for a variety of key publications and is currently also active as Sub-editor and Senior Reporter with Odisha Bhaskar, a regional daily newspaper. He can be reached via e-mail satya_mishra11@rediffmail.com ).
