ICC Note:

In the district of Kandhamal, located in northeastern India, local police released three individuals suspected of burning down a Christian home. According to Christian leader in Kandhamal, no reason or explanation was given for their release. The Christian home owner, Praful Digal, has rebuilt his home three times. Each time he builds, anti-Christian Hindu radicals destroy it. In 2008, mobs of Hindu radicals swept across the Kandhamal district, located in Orissa, attacking Christians and destroying their properties following the murder of a Hindu religious leader. Please pray for justice in this case.

4/30/2014 India (ICAN) – On April 24, Odisha Police released three people they arrested for destroying the house of a survivor of the 2008 Kandhamal violence. Praful Digal, a Catholic from Budruka village of Kandhamal district, had built the house with government funds recently. However, suspected Hindu radicals attacked the new house a week before Easter, said Fr. Pradosh Kumar Nayak, rector of St. Paul’s Minor Seminary, Balliguda, and the Dean of Balliguda Deanery that covers Budruka village. Budrukia is around 10 km from Balliguda town, a sub divisional headquarters.

Police arrested Sudershan Mallick, Pabitra Mallick, Nageswar Mallick on a complaint filed by Shiva, Praful’s 70-year-old father. However, the three were released Thursday night without giving any reasons. Fr Nayak said it was the third house the Digal family had built in the village in the past six years. Hindu radicals destroyed them all. The destruction of the third house built with government aid indicates that some forces were determined to keep Christians out of the village, Fr Nayak said. It also showed that Christians continue to lead a fearful existence in Kandhamal, he added. Kandhamal district witnessed unprecedented attacks against Christians following the assassination of Hindu religious leader on August 23, 2008.

Digal’s was among 834 houses Hindu radicals destroyed in the first anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal in December 2007. A few Christians were killed, a few young nuns were molested and some 50 churches and Christian institutions were also destroyed then. The Digal family mustered courage, returned to the village two months later and rebuilt the house. However, it was destroyed in the 2008 anti-Christian violence. After this attack, the family left the village and was sheltered by their relatives of another village where they still remain.

They had planned to return to the village after the completion of their house, which they constructed with the support of a government supported housing scheme for the poorest people. Praful is the eldest of the two sons in the Digal joint family. The sons have their own families and eke out a living on farming.

…