Pastor chased into forest and beaten for preaching the word of God
Andhra Pradesh police in the south Indian state connive with radicals to assault Pastor
Global Council of Indian Christians
3/12/07 India (Persecution Update India) Pastor B. Anand (48yrs.) (Bakhthula) is the pastor of a church by name of ‘Bethesda Pradhana Sahavasam’ in Ambojipeta village, on the way to Medak, in Andhra Pradesh. The church consists of about 200 believers.
Pastor Anand has been in Ambojipeta village for over 15 yrs. He chose this village, it is a village where maximum population consists of Black magicians and wrong doers.
On 11th March 2007 Pastor Anand went to a village named Gummadidhala to attend services conducted by the Pastor in Ambojipeta. Dayakar, through his help had formed a small group of 50 believers in his village (Gummadidhala).
On morning of the 11th, when he was alone in his house, about 15-20 RSS (Hindu radicals) men along with two Police constables came and demanded him to go along with them to the Jhajipatri police station to meet the Circle Inspector. When he went along with them, the constables left and he was left alone with the RSS members in the entrance of the police station itself.
The radicals took him to the forest area, about 6kms from the village and beat him with wooden logs on his face and his legs. Pastor Anand had seen that the RSS men had a bag filled with ropes and logs and knew that it was well planned as the ‘leader’ among the group had been a very active member in his church for the past 6 months. The pastor came to know only then that he had been a spy and was passing information and planned to harm him. The radicals run a well knit spy network to attack independent pastors.
The radicals had threatened him saying that he was using foreign money and that some Americans were giving him money to convert people to Christianity.
Till 3 in the morning they threatened him. Pastor Anand told them that they could confirm from the local police station and the believers in Ambojipeta whether he was involved in conversion. It was God’s will that none of them spoke in favor of the radicals and so Pastor Anand was released at 3am.
He immediately contacted Pastor Paranjyothi who contacted GCIC coordinator Ln.C. Francis to inform about the incident.
