her injuries Sunday, June 12, after militants attacked two orders in Bihar, one of India’s most impoverished north-eastern states. Church officials said Sister Manjula, in her late 60s, received serious head injuries when a gang of 15 men attacked her Notre Dame monastery at Raxual in Bihar, around midnight, June 9.
At the same time the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth order at Sokho, in Bhagalpur diocese, was attacked, but more details of the violence in this rural area were not immediately available, news reports said.
Notre Dame Sister Manjula was with two other nuns and their maid when the gang entered the monastery, breaking open the gate and doors, church officials explained.
ASKING MONEY
"They asked for money. But they have not taken materials such as [a] television [or] tape recorder when they left," added Father Henry Fernando of Bettiah diocese in an interview with The Indian Catholic publication.
He claimed the robbers "beat up the elderly nun [so] severely that her rib was broken." Bishop Victor Henry Thakur of Bettiah has visited the monastery and the injured nun in the hospital, the priest said.
"One more sister sustained minor injuries but the maid and another sister escaped unhurt, probably they hid themselves somewhere," Fernando was quoted as saying.
INVESTIGATION
He said diocesan leaders have filed a complaint in the local police station and stressed that "an investigation is ongoing" to see who was responsible for the attack.
Analysts say the attack against the nuns is the latest in a series of assaults on church workers in Bihar. In April, Father Mathew Uzhuthal, vicar general of Patna archdiocese, was stabbed. The 70-year-old priest died of stab wounds May 1.
The priest’s death had spread gloom throughout Bihar where the priest was quite popular, church watchers said. Although nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks against the nuns, human rights groups have expressed concern about what they claim is growing violence carried out mainly by Hindu militants against individual Christians and church leaders across India.
Religious tensions have been fuelled by poverty and caste divisions in Bihar, analysts say. At least dozens of Bihar villagers died in such violence in recent years, according to police. (Satya Sundar Mishra is 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. The reporter can be reached via e-mail satya_mishra11@rediffmail.com ).
