Sister Valsa John Murdered in Jharkhand

Sister Valsa John went to Jharkhand to work with tribal people Police in India's Jharkhand state are looking at the possible involvement of Maoist rebels in the murder of a nun who campaigned for tribal rights.

Sister Valsa John was killed after about 50 people broke into her home last week. Police say that Maoist pamphlets were left at the crime scene.
They said that rebels were finding it hard to infiltrate the area where the nun had considerable influence.

More than a dozen villagers have been detained in connection with the murder.
Initially, the police said they believed the Maoist pamphlets were left at the crime scene to mislead investigators.
But after interrogating the detained villagers, police say they believe that rebels were behind the murder.

"She was a major block in their [Maoists'] way," senior police officer Arun Oraon told the BBC Hndi's Salman Ravi.
"Therefore, the Maoists fanned all the resentment against her. They provoked the villagers to resort to such an extreme step," he said.

Sister John's brother, however, says she recently spoke of threats from a "mining mafia". There has been no word from mining officials.
Some reports said that Sister John had also angered a group of tribal people by going to the police to file a complaint after a local woman was allegedly raped. The tribesmen wanted the issue to be settled out of court.
Mr Oraon said the police were investigating all these angles.

Sister Valsa, originally from Kerala, was working with the Missionaries of Charity and had gone to Jharkhand to work with tribespeople.

Our correspondent says she later took up the cause of tribal people displaced by mining around Pakur, about 400km (250 miles) north-east of the state capital Ranchi.
The state government has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

(news  source  BBC  News  Service)

All this has happened to us

(Still   life  paintings   by  Luciano  Ventrone)

This   article  was  published  in  the  Hindustan Times  on April  5th.

Praying   to  be  heared.

Before the report, 'Hindu group involved in Orissa, Karnataka blasts', appeared in this paper on March 24, little had been written or spoken about the possible connection of 'Hindu terror' with attacks on Christians. Now, hopefully, some attention will be given to the role of the Hindu extremist grou p Abhinav Bharat in several attacks on the Christian community in the country as stated by the military investigator's report. The cases being handed over to National Investigation Agency will hopefully bring out this aspect more clearly and firmly.

For India's Christians, this revelation is nothing new. Their voice is often ignored by the police or by the powers that be. Let us take the case of Swami Aseemanand's confession before the magistrate. With revelations made by Aseemanand about his links with various terror attacks such as Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer dargah and the Samjhauta Express, it would be instructive to look into the role played by him and others in anti-Christian attacks.

Aseemanand had reportedly taken upon himself the task of targeting Christian missionaries working in the Dangs district of Gujarat ever since he arrived there in late 1995. Under his leadership, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal organised a rally on Christmas Day in 1998 in Subir to prevent Christmas celebrations. A person, allegedly planted in the crowd, threw a stone at the Hindus who had gathered to attack the Christians. The carnage that began on December 25 lasted for 12 days. The panic-stricken Christian community did not know where to turn, for there was a BJP government in Gujarat and the BJP-led NDA at the Centre.

The Aseemanands of the world heard the message loud and clear. In 2006, Aseemanand organised a Shabri Kumbh in the Dangs. The slogan was, 'Every single person converted to Christianity adds one more enemy to the country'.

The pattern followed by Aseemanand in the Dangs was replicated in Kandhamal by Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati. After Saraswati's death in the hands of the Maoists, Sangh parivar workers unleashed violence against Christians for 42 days, killing nearly 100 people, burning 147 churches,leaving nearly 48,000 people homeless, and raping a nun.

The story is the same in Karnataka. According to Justice Michael Saldanha who led the People's Tribunal Enquiry into the attacks on Christians, "The state is under an unprecedented wave of Christian persecution, having faced more than 1,000 attacks in 500 days... On January 26 [2010], the day we celebrated India's Republic Day, Karnataka's 1,000th attack took place in Mysore city."

In the past few years, the number of attacks on Christians, recorded by the Evangelical Fellowship of India, has been more than 1,000 attacks a year. On a petition by the spokesperson of the Madhya Pradesh Church, Father Anand Muttungal, the MP High Court asked the government to explain how in one year there had been more than 180 attacks on Christians.

India's Christians do not expect much from political parties, as the community is not perceived as a vote-bank for them. But they certainly expect the media to bring the injustice against them to the fore.


Dominic Emmanuel is director and spokesperson, Delhi Catholic Archdiocese
The views expressed by the author are personal.

I  read Psalm 44  this  morning - a  cry  of  complaint  and  trust

13You have made us a reproach to our neighbours, the scorn and derision of those around us
14 You have made us a byword among the nations; the peoples shake their heads at us.

15 My disgrace is before me all day long, and my face is covered with sham
16 at the taunts of those who reproach and revile me, because of the enemy, who is bent on revenge
17All this happened to us, though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant.
18 Our hearts had not turned back; our feet had not strayed from your path
19 But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals and covered us over with deep darknes

22 Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

23Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us for ever
24 Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression
25We are brought down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground
26 Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love

Life Sentence for Dara Singh

India 's Supreme Court upholds life sentence for Dara
New Delhi, Jan 21, (PTI) :

Dara Singh, convicted for burning alive Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in January 1999, on Friday escaped death penalty with the Supreme Court ruling that the crime was not the ''rarest of rare'' case and upheld the life sentence awarded to him.


“In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity,” the court said.

Dismissing CBI’s plea for death penalty to Singh, a bench of justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan endorsed the Orissa High Court’s finding that his crime did not fall under the rarest of rare category.

In its 76-page judgment, the court came out strongly against the practice of conversion. “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of ‘use of force’, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other,” it said.

On May 19, 2005, the Orissa High Court had commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty imposed by the sessions court on Singh for the murder of Staines and his sons—Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6.

Along with Dara, his accomplice Mahendra Hembram was convicted in the case.
The Staines family was burnt alive in Keonjhar district in Orissa. Staines had worked with leprosy patients in Orissa for 30 years. He and his sons were sleeping on a cold January night when a mob in Manoharpur village poured petrol over his car parked in front of the village church and torched it.

They tried to escape but the mob of about 50 people allegedly prevented them.
Singh had filed an appeal challenging his conviction and the life sentence awarded to him. The appeals were admitted by the apex court in October 2005. “In a country like ours where discrimination on the ground of caste or religion is a taboo, taking lives of persons belonging to another caste or religion is bound to have a dangerous and reactive effect on the society at large,” the court said.

“It strikes at the very root of the orderly society which the founding fathers of our Constitution dreamt of,” the bench added, while upholding the conviction and entailing life term also to Hembram of Keonjhar.

“Our concept of secularism is that the State will have no religion. The State shall treat all religions and religious groups equally and with equal respect without in any manner interfering with their individual right of religion, faith and worship.

“We also conclude with the hope that Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of religion playing a positive role in bringing India’s numerous religion and communities into an integrated prosperous nation be realised by way of equal respect for all religions,” the bench said.
Report taken from the Deccan Herald

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Many people in India feel that Dara Singh deserves a death sentence for his diabolical crime.
The words of the judgement stung me very sharply. Was Dara Singh trying to 'teach them a lesson ' against 'forceful ' conversion by his extremely evil act?
Dr and Mrs Stains served leprosy patients in India faithfully for 30 years. There is no evidence that the Stains were converting people by force. A few days after the killings a Hindu radical swami visited the area where Dr Stains worked and found all Hindus there - leprosy patients being treated and rehabilitated.
Anyone else would have been frozen with shock and anger at the news of the brutal killing of their husband and 2 sons, but ains said she forgave the murders. She kept on working in Orissa Gladys Stains wanting to carry on her husband 's service.

You can read their story in the book Burnt Alive by Vishal Mangaalwadi .

The Supreme Court has given a life term to Dara Singh.
God has given him time to repent of his sin.


Psalm 11:7
For the LORD is righteous, he loves justice; the upright will see his face.
Psalm 11:6-7

Do remember to pray for Christian workers and missionaries in India