JASHPUR (UCAN): Sister Bibha Kerketta, a newly professed Catholic nun and her mother were among five people arrested for allegedly offending religious feelings and promoting enmity between religions after they joined a Mass in the central Indian Chhattisgarh state.
Police arrested Sister Kerketta, a member of Daughters of St. Anne, on the night of June 6 along with her mother, aunt, uncle and a driver from her home at Balachapper village, the Diocese of Jashpur.
“The nun and her family members were booked in a totally false case,” said Father Nirmal Minj, parish priest of the nun’s Shanti Bhavan parish.
The arrested were kept in the police station overnight and brought before the court the following day, the evening of June 7. Bail was granted to the nun’s uncle but remanded others into judicial custody, Father Minj said.
Sister Kerketta became a professed nun in December and the family “celebrated a thanksgiving Mass at her home,” the priest explained on June 8, adding, “Close family members, priests and nuns from the locality attended the Mass and had a fellowship meal as well.”
Father Minj recounted that soon after the guests left, some 20 men, some from the nearby villages, forced their way into her home and started abusing them.
“They slapped her mother and threw away the Bible, candle stand, and rosary,” he said, adding, “The men also questioned why they became Christian and threatened them. Soon the police arrived and took five of them to the police station.”
Father Minj said, “It is very sad. We don’t understand how Mass is portrayed as something creating enmity between people of other religions.”
Christians continue to face serious violence and harassment at the hands of Hindu activists in India, while sectarian violence has displaced more than 1,000 indigenous Christians in the state’s Maoist-infested Bastar region since August 2022.
Christians say that organised attacks forced many of them to flee from their villages. Their assailants looted their houses, farm animals and crops.
Christians are also denied permission to bury their dead in the villages forcing them to carry the bodies to the distant government or other Church cemeteries for funerals.
Chhattisgarh’s chief minister, Bhupesh Baghel, had assured action against those behind the violence, but Church leaders said the situation remains grim.
Father John Crus Minj, the secretary to Bishop Emmanuel Kerketta of Jashpur, condemned the attack on the nun, her family members and others. He said they would appeal to the state government to take immediate action and stop the harassment of Christians.
Christians make up less than two per cent of the state’s 30 million people, which is mostly tribal-dominated.
