A Dutch missioner in Jammu and Kashmir is appealing an expulsion order requiring him to leave India by the end of July, saying the order is the result of a mishandled police investigation. Mill Hill missioner Father Jim Borst and Church representatives have approached state and federal officials to revoke the order.
They expect “a positive result soon,” said Bishop Peter Celestine Elampassery of Jammu-Srinagar.
Father Borst wrote to federal minister Farooq Abdullah, a native of the state and its former chief minister, asking him to help expunge the state’s Foreigners Registration Office order.
It was issued on June 26 by an officer “who is consciously and deliberately making sure I will have to leave the country,” Father Borst said in the letter.
Media reports said the priest was asked to leave because of his attempt to convert people in India’s only Muslim majority state.
Father Borst said officers investigating the allegations never spoke to him directly but gathered details about him from neighbors and others sources which resulted in them getting “incomplete, distorted or even plainly wrong” information.
The priest said he used to visit a Muslim intellectual, who an official has accused of converting to Christianity.
“The local mosque is even refusing to accept him (but) he is Muslim and has never been a Christian.”
Father Borst, who has served in the state since 1963, said the official who issued the order has not approached him for any information and has also refused to speak to him.
“I have reason to believe” State Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who is Farooq Abdullah’s son, sanctioned the order “reluctantly, under pressure from his very busy schedule.”
SIC: CTHIND