By Matters India Reporter
Malkangiri, June 6, 2020: The murder of a teenage Christian boy in Odisha state on June 4 exposes the frightening and tainted mentality of religious fanatics in India, says Shibu Thomas of Persecution Relief, an agency that monitors attacks on Christians in the country.
Samaru Madkami, 14, was murder by a mob in Kenduguda, a village in the eastern Indian state’s Malkangiri district, Thomas said, quoting local pastor Bijay Pusuru.
The attackers had tried to kidnap three Christians, but two of them, who were physically strong, managed to escape the mob, leaving Madkami, a seventh grader, to their mercy.
Madkami was the son of Unga Madkami, who serves in the Bethel House Church- a ministry headed by Pastor Pusuru. Samaru had lost his mother when he was an infant.
On June 5, Pastor Pusuru went to the Malkangiri Police Station to lodge a complaint about the teen. The station in charge dispatched three police vehicles to the village. However the suspects disappeared by the time the police arrived.
The police however managed to arrest around a dozen suspects by around 9 pm on June 5.
The attackers then narrated how they chopped the boy’s body into pieces and buried it before fleeing the scene, Thomas said quoting the local pastor.
According to Thomas, Christians in Kenduguda village have faced threats and harassment from religious fanatics for years. “There have been many attacks on Christians since the beginning of this year,” The local pastor had filed at least four complaints at the Malkangiri police station.
The boy and his father had become Christians three years ago. Since then, they started facing harassment from their neighbors and radicals from outside.
Around 11 am on June 3, some villagers picked the boy telling him that he had to attend a meeting in a nearby forest.
The gang returned armed with arms at midnight to pick up the father. But he managed to escape and went to the police station to make a complaint.
The boy’s family, church members and the pastor now await the magistrate’s orders to exhume the body.
Thomas says the Odisha teenager’s murder was “the most disturbing” among more than 1,500 anti-Christian cases he has handled in the past four years.
“The hate and aggression in the minds of the religious fanatics and the brutal nature of this crime leaves me dumbfounded,” he says. Such “vicious cruelty” exposes the religious fanatics’ “tainted mentality,” which Thomas finds “frightening” and the peak of “new inhuman attitude.”
Thomas also points out Odisha has witnessed several incidents of anti-Christian violence for decades. The worst was the killing of Australian missionary Graham Stains and his two young sons, Philip and Timothy, on January 1, 1999.
The state also witnessed unprecedented attacks on Christians in 2008 that lasted a few months.
In 2019, the state witnessed 22 cases of Christian persecution, and this year eight cases, including the teen’s murder.
According to Thomas, Odisha ranks 10 among states hostile to Christians in India.