Orissa Police Arrest and Confiscate New Testament and Bible Portions
Global Council of Indian Christians
4/18/07 India (Persecution Update India) Yesterday, (17-4-07), Pastor Pran Ranjan Mali (Independent), Pastor Santosh Kumar Majhi (IPC), Pastor Jayson Badra & Pastor Roshan Lima (BCI), along with other friends on Cycles visited a village called 42 Mouza under Govindpur P.S. of Cuttack District with New Testaments and free Gospel Tracts. They arrived at the village around 10AM and started selling the New Testaments on door to door basis. They continued till 2 PM on the same day. They never got any opposition from any house while selling.
Suddenly at around 0215 PM, on the village road, they were followed by a group of 15 to 16 Hindu fanatics belonged to the Sangh Parivar, who stopped them in continuing the gospel work. They accused & scolded them with vulgar words and took them forcibly to their village temple while threatening to tonsure (shave) them after some time. Few of the radicals guarded these poor, innocent evangelists.
Meanwhile others went to organize the materials and a Brahmin priest to perform the ritual of Tonsuring & Cow Dung Sprinkling & Drinking with Puja for sanctification.
When the situation became out of control as the radicals could not organize things instantly, they had no alternative but to take them again forcibly to the Police station and hand them over there with a false charge of doing forcible conversion violating OFRA ACT (Anti-conversion act).
Police, after arresting, also scolded them on the same grounds and put them in the Custody for the whole night and threatened them that they will send them to the Court the next day. Police never allowed them to contact even their attorneys in spite of their demand.
The cruelty continued in the police custody with intimidation and humiliation. But God brought them an opportunity by which Pastor Pran Ranjan Mali could just send a text message which reached GCIC. Police seized around 40 New Testaments & a few gospel tracts from them and released them on GCIC intervention.
The pastors have just reached safely at their respective homes now.
