By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, Nov 26, 2019: India’s Constitution Day has brought good news to five “innocent people” of Kandhamal, Odisha, who have been languishing in jail for more than a decade in connection with the murder of a Hindu religious leader.
“This to inform you 5 of the 7 innocents in jail for the false accusations of killing Swamy Laxmananda (Saraswati) got bail from Supreme Court today. Two got bail beginning of this year,” says a November 26 message from A C Michael of the Indian unit of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) that has helped the seven in their legal battle.
ADF is an organization that defends the rights of Christians, protects fundamental freedoms and human dignity.
The seven were condemned to life imprisonment for the murder of Swami Saraswati, a nonagenarian leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, on the night of August 23, 2008, in a Kandhamal village.
Maoist extremists active in the Odisha jungles had claimed responsibility for the killing.
However, Hindu extremist groups used as the murder as a pretext to unleash unprecedented anti-Christian persecution that killed more than 100 people and displaced 50,000 local Christians.
ADF and several legal experts say the seven Christians were falsely implicated in the case to support the Hindu radicals’ allegation that Church groups had plotted Swami Saraswati’s murder.
The bail for the five came on November 26, the day Indian’s observe as the Constitution Day. India’s Constituent Assembly completed the drafting of the Constitution on this day 70 years ago.
The seven innocents were convicted in 2013 abruptly after two judges had been transferred. While their bail pleas had been twice rejected by the Odisha High Court, Cuttack, last in December 2018, their appeals against the conviction has been dragging on for more than five years in the Odisha High Court.