Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
New Delhi (Agenzia Fides) - Murder without justice. And so far no one has been found guilty. The Catholic community in India reports to Fides that for two recent murders, that of a Catholic catechist Rabindra Parichha in Orissa and that of Sister Valsa John in Jharkhand, the investigations are still at a stop. The risk that dossiers are abandoned or covered up is very high.
Investigations into the killing of Rabindra Parichha (see Fides 16/12/2011), a former Catholic catechist and human rights activist in Orissa have not produced any results: this is what Brother K.J. Markos tells Fides, a Monfortan missionary and lawyer, who works in Kandhamal, the theater of anti-Christian violence in 2008. After 34 days since the murder, a suspect was arrested but then released because he promised to cooperate with the investigators. According to the relatives of the deceased, so far, however, the investigation has not given any result.
"I contacted three of Parichha’s colleagues. They know nothing about the case", Brother Markos told Fides. "It is sad to see that the police has not yet considered the matter and has no idea who the culprits are. Even family members and colleagues seem to have left the matter to its fate, perhaps out of fear. I am going to follow the case. If the police do not respond, then we could lodge a formal complaint to the Court", he added. Even because, brother Markos remarks, "the delay is likely to destroy any evidence". Parichha was a legal activist with the Evangelical Fellowship of India, which brings together many evangelical churches, and was working for the legal assistance of the victims of the anti-Christian massacres carried out in 2008 in Kandhamal.
Same fate for the murder of Sister Valsa John, the nun of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary killed at her home in the district of Pakur, on the evening of November 15 (see Fides 17/11/2011). Immediately after the murder, the police had arrested seven suspects, claiming that the murder could be the work of "suspected Maoists, together with the inhabitants of the village" where the nun lived. But nothing concrete has emerged and there is no evidence concerning the perpetrators and, above all, on the murder that, according to local sources, is to be sought among the leaders of the mining companies that the nun had hindered, in her work with the Indigenous. Some days ago the nuns, priests, laity and the faithful met in Ranchi to pay homage to the woman who "fought the corrupt system with a Bible and the Indian Constitution" (one of the few objects found among her possessions, ed.) The activists, reports Sr.Joel to Fides, on of Sister Valsa’s sisters, have formed a Committee to meet with the civil authorities in Jharkhand and ask to find out who the real culprits are, that is, the main people who hide behind the killers hired for the crime. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 18/01/2012)
