New Delhi: The petitioners who have moved the Supreme Court alleging widespread attacks against Christians in the country on Monday, May 8, urged the top court to appoint a monitoring agency to effectively oversee the ongoing criminal investigations in “troubled spots” across the country.
According to LiveLaw, this request was made by the petitioners – Rev Peter Machado, the archbishop of the Bangalore Diocese, along with the National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India – in their rejoinder filed to the Union government’s counter-affidavit.
The Union government’s counter-affidavit, denying that Christians in the country are persecuted, said the petition relies on “baseless and unverified reports”, claiming that even personal disputes were painted as communal attacks.
However, in the rejoinder, the petitioners said that “there is a failure by State machinery in taking immediate and necessary stringent actions against groups that have caused widespread violence and hate speech against the Christian community including attacks at their places of worship and disruption of prayer meetings”, according to LiveLaw.
They added:
“[T]he Compliance Affidavit filed by the Union of India discloses that political groups linked to the Union were themselves involved in the communal crimes. The Union of India therefore cannot be relied upon or trusted with monitoring or reporting to this Hon’ble Court”.
The government’s affidavit, the rejoinder states, “has inadvertently disclosed the identity of the assailants right across India”. From FIRs, it is evident that right-wing organisations like “Hindu Sangathan”, “Hindu Vadi Sanghatan”, “Hindu Jagran Manch”, “members of RSS, Bajrang Dal, VHP” are involved in the attacks, the rejoinder says.
The petitioners expressed a lack of confidence in the Union government and requested a retired judge of the Supreme Court to be appointed to be the monitoring agency of all hate crimes, “with a mandate to appoint distinguished police officers who can effectively supervise the investigation in these cases”, according to the report.
The petitioners also highlighted that incidents of violence against Christians in various states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh had risen since 2021, coinciding with these states passing strict anti-conversion laws. They argued that the attacks were part of a larger pattern of religious intolerance and discrimination against minority communities in the country, claiming that the attacks are “not spontaneous or unconnected but rather part of the overall well-planned strategy”, according to LiveLaw.
According to the petitioners, attacks against Christians have intensified since the Supreme Court’s order on September 1, 2022, which required state governments to file compliance reports. They claimed that there were 505 instances of assault in 2021, 598 in 2022, and 123 in January and February of 2023.
The petitioners assert that 90% of these attacks follow a similar pattern, where a large group of people abruptly gather at a private residence or church during a prayer meeting, forcefully enter the premises, disrupt the meeting, assault the members, drag the pastor away, and file an FIR alleging illegal conversion.
In some cases, FIRs are filed against the assailants, but counter-FIRs are filed against the Christian community. The petitioners allege that members of the community and priests are detained for extended periods without bail, while the assailants are not held in detention at all. Furthermore, they claim that in many cases, police have pressured community members not to file FIRs.
The petitioners contend that the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court in the Tehseen Poonawalla case regarding the appointment of nodal officers to prevent mob crimes have not been followed. The rejoinder says, “in not a single one of the incidents 1000 instances set out in this petition has the nodal officer intervened to assist the victim or to register an FIR or to provide legal aid. The nodal officers have been totally absent in all these 1000 instances of hate crimes”.