A Hindu radical group assaulted two Catholic nuns and three teenage tribal girls in a western Indian village where they were preparing to hold a women's-empowerment program.Sister Merciana Tuscano told UCA News on March 16 that radical Hindu men and women attacked the nuns and tribal girls in Sanghoti, a village in Maharashtra state, the previous day.
A mob shouted at the nuns, accusing them of "converting tribal people to Christianity," the Congregation of Carmelite Religious nun said over the phone. She added that they "told us to leave the village at once and never to come back or else they would break our legs."
She explained that the Catholic group was in Sanghoti to conduct an empowerment program for about 500 women from seven villages. Sanghoti is near Alibag, headquarters of Raigad district, 120 kilometers south of Mumbai Mumbai.
Sister Tuscano's congregation has a convent as well as a school for girls and boys in Alibag, which comes under Bombay archdiocese. Bombay is the former name of Mumbai, 1,410 kilometers southwest of New Delhi.
The program was to begin at 12 noon on March 15, but about 20 men and 20 women came around 10:30 a.m. and began to throw away chairs and tables, Sister Tuscano recounted. When she confronted the group, "the women caught hold of me, pulled my hair and punched me hard all over my body." She said she cried for help, but the group dragged her out of the venue.
By then her companion, Sister Philomena D'Mello, had arrived with some women for the program. "The mob rushed at her, caught hold of her, punched her all over. When she fell down in pain, a man stamped (on) her stomach twice," Sister Tuscano narrated. The mob also attacked Sister Tuscano's driver, Bernard Martis, a Catholic who tried to intervene.
The wounded group was rushed to a government hospital in Alibag but were discharged on March 16.
Sister Floripe D'Silva, the nuns' Mumbai-based vice provincial, told UCA News she would take them to a private hospital for further checkup. She said she found all six of them traumatized when she went to Alibag soon after the incident.
She said her nuns have conducted programs for tribal women in the district for the past 15 years and "this is the first time our nuns are attacked." The nuns conduct adult literacy classes, encourage women to start self-help groups and popularize the government AIDS program.
The vice provincial also said the mob destroyed a grinding machine a Mumbai-based NGO recently donated to help tribal women generate income. She added that the incident shocked a Hindu woman social worker who had come to talk about AIDS on behalf of the government.
Abraham Mathai, vice chairman of the Maharashtra state Minorities Commission, and Joseph Dias, general secretary of Mumbai-based Catholic Secular Forum, visited the village and met police officials to urge them to book the attackers. Mathai told UCA News he has urged the police to rearrest the culprits, who were granted bail.
Shiv Prasad, deputy superintendent of police for the district, told UCA News on March 16 that the police reached the scene an hour after receiving a complaint and arrested 13 Hindu women and men. "They were produced before a local court in Alibag on March 15 evening and granted bail the same day," he said.
The police official said the attackers, followers of a local Hindu guru, accused the nuns of "converting the local tribal people to Christianity," a charge Sister D'Silva refuted.
The nun asserted: "It is a humbug charge. We have not converted a single tribal." She also said the tribal people have told the police that the nuns do not preach religion but only train them to lead a decent life.
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