By Blasius Tete
Mon: A Salesian priest on June 9 received head injuries after a young man hit him with the statue of Don Bosco in the eastern Indian state of Nagaland.
The incident occurred in the evening at Don Bosco Higher Secondary School at Mon, a town some 325 km northeast of Kohima, the state capital.
The injured priest, Father Arokiasamy Savarimuthu, is the incharge of the school and his attacker was identified as Pushai Konyak, 25.
The police have started a probe into the incident,
Salesian Brother Alexius Tuti, who works in the school, said the youth came to the school book counter and demanded 2,000 rupees.
Brother Tuti told Konyak that he had to give the money to Father Savarimuthu. The youth then asked Sacred Heart Sister Reny Catherine, a collaborator in the school, who too told him that she would not give money from the bookstall.
After sometime, Father Savarimuthu reached the school and went to his room. Konyak, who followed him, took the statue and hit the priest on his head. He closed the priest’s mouth with one hand and caught his neck by the other.
Brother Tuti, who came to the scene, tried to separate the two. He also called Father John Kikon, who was in the kitchen. Brother Tuti and Father Kikon separated Father Savarimuthu and Konyak and brought the situation under control.
As news spread, Catholics, school authorities and members of the Konyak students’ union arrived.
A First Information Report was registered against Konyak.
Father Savarimuthu was taken to the hospital for the first aid. They returned around 9:15 pm.
Konyak later said he wanted to avenge Father Savarimuthu for dismissing him from the school in 2007 when he was an eighth grader.
The priest said he neither knows his attackers nor recalls expelling him from the school.
“So the sole motive of the boy was to get easy money and nothing else,” said Sister Catherine.
The Don Bosco Higher Secondary School in Mon is functions under the diocese of Kohima. The Salesians set it up in 1980. It now has more than 1,800 students.