India: Martyrdom Case Declared A Murder

India: Martyrdom Case Declared A Murder
Court orders Kandhmal ‘Martyrdom Case’ to be booked as a murder case. GCIC demands CBI probe into the 5 other similar cases.
ICC Note:
Perpetrators in the death of a Christian last year have been booked for a murder case. This is a great victory for those who wish to “register cases against perpetrators of martyrdoms” as murders rather than accidents.  Christians are now asking for five similar cases of martyrdom to be considered murder as well.
08/08/2012 India (CPUI)- The Baliguda(Kandhamal)SDJM Court passed orders on Tuesday,7-8-12, declaring the death of Michael Nayak (Minoketan) as a clear case of first degree murder and to book the perpetrators of the murder. Michael Nayak was murdered by the Hindu radicals on the night of 26 July 2011, but unfortunately the police wrote it off as a death by accident. The court ordering to book the culprits under section 302 of IPC as a case of murder has exposed the police complicit in the case as they had done everything to ‘bury’ the case along with the unfortunate victim. This is a major boost to the efforts to register cases against perpetrators of martyrdoms which remain buried as cases of accidents because of police complicity or their callousness in Kandhamal. Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), demands to reinvestigate five other similar cases of martyrdoms in this region which have been registered as deaths by accidents by the Orissa police, to provide justice to the Christian community in Kandhamal.
The complainant, Gourang Nayak, gave evidence in 1CC 34/11, the case of Pastor Minoketan’s Murder case in the Balliguda SDJM court and the evidence against the Orissa police was accepted and the magistrate ordered in the open court that the murder case is initially made out to be an accident. The police had done everything possible to bury the murder case of Minoketan (MIchael) Nayak of Midiakia-Kutipada village as an accident. The great tragedy is that the Police in Kandhamal with impunity change murders into accidental deaths: On 10th January, evening, another pastor, Pastor Saula Pradhan from Banjamaha village in Raikia was also taken away from his house by two tribal Hindu ‘friends’ and only the next day his dead body was found. The story too is similar in many ways to that of Minoketan. Saula Pradhan’s death was also explained away by the police as death having been exposed to cold in the night after getting drunk. It is a clear case of the police siding with the RSS conspiracy to eliminate Christian leaders in Kandhamal. It is a well-known fact that Mr. Manoj Pradhan, MLA of G Udayagiri, a convict on bail, goes around planning and instigating fanatics to eliminate Christian leaders.
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