Trans World Radio Worker Killed In India For Preaching
Pastor Dale Morgan
Trans World Radio Worker Killed In India For Preaching*
Oct 3st, 2007 3:16 AM
By BosNewsLife News Center
NEW DELHI, INDIA (BosNewsLife) -- An Indian evangelist working for
international Christian broadcaster Trans World Radio has been shot and
killed because of his involvement in converting Hindus to Christianity,
police reportedly confirmed Friday, September 28.
Ajay Topno, 38, was found dead with bullet wounds on September 19 in a
jungle near Sahoda village in the Ranchi district of India's Jharkhand
state.
In comments published by Compass Direct News agency, which investigates
reports of persecution, a police official said Topno infuriated
villagers after converting at least three tribal families in Sahoda village.
"After reconverting the Christian families, the villagers arranged for
Topno’s killing through a local criminal, who shot him dead," explained
Inspector Rajesh Mandal of the local Lapung police station. Earlier the
Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), a major advocacy group, said
earlier that "Friends of Ajay fear that radical [Hindu] organizations
could have abducted him from his native tribal village..."
LEAVING HOME
He left his house on September 16, telling his wife that he was going to
Sahoda village, but he never returned, the GCIC said.
The case has underscored concerns about an apparent trend of attacks
against Christians in the mainly Hindu nation. In a statement to
BosNewsLife the Washington DC-based group International Christian
Concern (ICC), with Website www.persecution.org, said that Hindu
"extremist groups Bajrang Dal and Hindu Jagruti Samiti distributed
thousands of anti-Christian leaflets in Chitradurga district in the
southern state of Karnataka last month."
The campaign allegedly resulted in an incident on August 5, when at
least 50 extremists attacked more than 10 workers of the Seventh Day
Adventist church during the dedication of a new church in Sira area
between Tumkur and Chitradurga districts. On August 16, the victimized
Christian workers were arrested on charges of "forcible conversion," the
ICC added.
GOVERNING PARTY
"The trend of launching venomous propaganda campaigns that incite
physical attacks against the Christian minority came to fore in 1998
when the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political
arm of the chief Hindu extremist organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS), graduated from a party on the margins to a mainstream and
ruling party in India," the group said.
More recently, Muslim militants have joined the attacks, according to
ICC investigators. The group said it established that "six Christian
convert families have been ostracized and threatened by Muslim leaders
in their village. In addition, a group of Muslims forced a Christian
woman to strip in order to check for any marks of conversion on her body."
The incident occurred on September 4 in Natungram village in West
Bengal's Murshidabad district, but the victims have not lodged a
complaint with the police yet, "fearing for their lives," the ICC quoted
a local Christian source as saying.
COURT CASE
Amid the reports of persecution, there have been some positive
developments for Christians: a pastor and his sister were cleared of
charges of rape and abortion in Chhattisgarh state.
The Evangelical Fellowship of India said Pastor Simon Tandi, a convert
from Hinduism, and his sister Sanjeela Begum were acquitted by a court
in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district on September 12.
Tandi was facing charges of raping and forcing a girl to terminate the
resulting pregnancy after she filed a complaint against him – prompted
by a Hindu extremist group – in June 2005, Compass Direct News recalled.
His sister Begum was accused of "abetting" the crime. Tandi spent six
months in jail, and his sister four months, before they were released on
bail prior to the acquittal.
Christians comprise roughly just over two percent of India's over 1.1
billion strong, mainly Hindu, population.