Indian police arrested five people, including leaders of the prominent pro-Hindu local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on January 2 in connection with the Narayanpur church attack in India.
A group of tribals vandalized the Sacred Heart Church and attacked police during a protest.
It happened after the group held a meeting to discuss religious conversions in the tribal-dominated Narayanpur in the afternoon, who then barged into the Vishwadeep High School and vandalized the church on the same campus.
It has been identified that the arrested BJP leaders are Rupsai Salam (55), Pawankumar Nag (24), Atul Netam (24), Ankit Nandi (31) and Domendra Yadav (21). Except for Salam, who is from Remawand in Narayanpur, the others are from Bakhrupara, India.
"We registered three first information reports (FIRs) under several sections of the Indian Penal Code for criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly, promoting enmity between different groups on religious grounds, criminal intimidation, deliberately and maliciously outraging religious feelings of any one class, and murder of a government employee," said Sadanand Kumar, Superintendent of Police in the sectarian violence-hit Narayanpur district.
The arrested people have been remanded in judicial custody, including leaders of the prominent pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the federal government.
Chhattisgarh's state government in India is run by the Congress party, the BJP's arch-rival, which swears by secularism. - By Anbu Selvam
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
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