FOR PRAYER! Honnavar, September 07, 2013: St. Thomas Church at Honnavar in the coastal district of Uttara Kannada in Karnataka is one of the oldest churches of Mar Thomaites involved in the service of the society doing a lot of good work for the amelioration of the suffering by people regardless of their religious background. Besides running a Kannada medium school, the St. Thomas School, they also have a Children’s Compassion Home at Haladipur, where they cater to the needs of about 60 poor orphan children giving them food, clothes and also helping them through tuition classes in the evenings and holidays. The children who belong to all religious backgrounds go back to their respective homes in the evening after an early meal. They also have an old age home and a facility to help the poor village pregnant women with nutritious food and necessary advice as to how they should go about in their delicate condition. Rev. Fr. Joji Thomas is in charge of all these humanitarian activities and there hasn’t been any problem, whatsoever, so far, as their work has been hailed by all people belonging to all religions. On 25th of August 2013, at about 4 pm, about 20 Hindu fundamentalists belonging to RSS and Bajrang Dal outfits, without any prior notice or information, simply barged inside the campus and began questioning the children and asking for details about their backgrounds. Simultaneously, they also kept on video-graphing and taking photographs of children and the different locations on the campus. Social Worker Sunil Varghese, and Evangelists Alexander and Sabu who were present on the campus were shocked and surprised with the unexpected developments. The police from Honnavar Police Station who had accompanied the hoodlums, seemed to supervise the actions by fanatic Hindus as they were silently standing and watching the whole scenario. The saddest part was the RSS and the Bajrang Dal hoodlums also physically attacked and beat up Sunil Varghese, Alexander and Sabu, without any provocation, right in front of the police, allegedly for forcible conversion of Hindus to Christianity. The police then arrested all the three innocent Christians and took them to Honnavar Police Station and locked them up for the night. The next day, 26-08-2013, they were charge-sheeted under section 295-A of IPC, falsely alleging them of forcible conversion of children and produced before the Magistrate at Kumta, where they were released on bail. The case is going on. Please pray for them.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 16:21:07 +0000