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Christian couple injured in attack by Hindu activists in Gujarat. |
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Sunday, 06 March 2005 |
 Jamubhai Choudhary and his wife Jathriben, a Christian couple from Valia Taluka in Gujarat, are recovering from the injuries received when axe-wielding Hindu villagers assaulted them three weeks ago.
"They were attacked on the evening of May 7 when they were returning from their field," Samson Christian, an executive of All India Christian Council (aicc), said. "Jamubhai received a deep cut on his head and fell unconscious on the spot, while his wife suffered a bone fracture in her right hand."
When contacted, Valia Taluka Chief Constable Roop Singh Bhai said the officers had arrested two local men, Arjunbhai Devabhai Bema and Khansinghbhai Devabhai Bema, for assaulting the couple. He denied that the attack was religiously motivated. "It was simply a personal dispute," he said. "Jamubhai and his wife have acknowledged this in their statement. There has never been any communal trouble in our jurisdiction."
Joseph Durairaj, area coordinator of the Friends Missionary Prayer Band, preferred to disagree. "I met Jamubhai in the Civil Hospital and he told me that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bajrang Dal were behind the attack," he said.
"Jamubhai and his wife are a simple farming couple. The police can easily make them give such a statement to shield the real culprits," Durairaj said. The attackers were targeting the small group of Christians who met for worship in the Choudhary home every Sunday and planned to construct a small church building there, he added.
"But in January this year when we took building materials to the site, some villagers strongly objected to it and threatened them. As a result, we could not begin the construction," he said.
Only 12 of the 130 families in the village are Christian. "Hindu fundamentalists have changed their usual way of attacking Minorities in Gujarat after the riots of 2002, when the state was identified as the most communal in India," Samson Christian said. "Now they target Christians using local people, so that their attacks can be attributed to 'personal disputes.'"
Christian pointed to the brutal beating of Sunil Benjamin Patel, a Christian teacher at a government school in Petia village, Valia Taluka, on 14 March 2005. "On 6 March 2005, a few days before the attack, about 10,000 people from different Hindu organisations had gathered under the banner of Dharma Raksha Samiti in the same village," Christian said. "The leaders of this gathering spoke against Christian missionaries."
The police arrested a member of a Hindu fundamentalist organisation in connection with the assault, he added. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 September 2009 )
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