ICC Note:

New efforts are being made by Indian Christians leaders to secure the release of 7 innocent Christians that have been falsely imprisoned since 2008 in India’s Odisha State. In 2008, 7 Christians were falsely accused of killing a radical Hindu leader. These false accusations led to widespread violence in which mobs of enraged Hindus attacked hundreds of villages where Christians lived. As a result, 300 churches were destroyed, 6,000 Christian homes were burned, and over 100 Christians were killed. With these new efforts being made, will these 7 innocent Christians finally be released?

3/16/2016 India (Vatican Radio) – Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai and president of Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC), on March 14 launched the revamped website – www.release7innocents.com – for petitioning the release of seven innocent Christians of remote Kandhamal district in Odisha state of India.

The seven innocent Christians – six of them illiterates – have been languishing in jail since late 2008 after their arrest on trumped up charge of the mysterious murder of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati on August 23, 2008 that was touted as a Christian conspiracy.

Following the Hindu leader’s murder, nearly 100 Christians had been killed and 300 churches and 6,000 Christian houses plundered and torched in unabated violence that continued for weeks. Hindu masses – most of them illiterate – had been incited to take revenge on the Christians after the slain Swami’s body was paraded across Kandhamal for two days along zigzag routes.

“Everyone should speak up for these people,” said Cardinal Gracias, one of the eight advisors of Pope Francis, while signing the petition for the release of the innocents, at his office in Mumbai where he is recuperating after a surgery in the US.

The trial court had convicted the seven accused – Bijay Kumar Sanseth, Gornath Chalanseth, Durjo Sunamajhi, Bhaskar Sunamajhi, Budhadeb Nayak, Munda Badamaji and Sanatan Badamajhi – and sentenced them to life imprisonment on October 3, 2013.

“The shocking conviction is based on a fabricated Christian conspiracy theory amid hardly any credible evidence being brought before the court”, pointed out journalist Anto Akkara who is anchoring the campaign for the release of the seven innocent Christian convicts.

The journalist author has made 23 trips to Kandhamal during last eight years and  brought out four investigative books on Kandhamal – two each from secular human rights perspective and two each from Christian faith perspective.

In a press statement, Akkara further pointed out that two top police officials – who had relied upon the same conspiracy theory to ensure the conviction of the innocent Christians – had testified in June 2015 before the Kandhamal Inquiry Commission headed by retired High Court Judge A S Naidu that the Christian conspiracy allegations were false.

Yet, Akkara noted, the hearing on the appeal of the innocent convicts has been repeatedly postponed by the Odisha High Court.

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