By F. M. Britto
Raipur, June 20, 2023: Three masked men have looted a presbytery in broad daylight under the Raipur archdiocese in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.
“I am safe, anyhow,” Father Varghese Thekkekut, parish priest of St. Theresa of Avila at Bagbahra in Mahasamund district, told Matters India June 20.
The parish is 89 km east of Raipur, the state capital.
The intruders on June 18 looted nearly 130,000 rupees at gunpoint from Father Thekkekut before fleeing on a two-wheeler.
“I had kept so much money with me – donated by my personal benefactors – to help the needy students at the beginning of the academic year and for the cultivation of our mission fields,” the priest said.
He said the police have taken serious steps to identify and arrest the miscreants, says its parish priest.
As the priest asked them to accompany him to the adjoining church, one of them told him to pray there itself and forced him on his cot.
Pulling out a pistol from his pocket, the intruder demanded, “Where is the maal?” (meaning money).
While one kept pointing the revolver at the 69-year-old priest, the other two searched his room. They found the cash in his shelves.
Finally tying the priest’s hands and the feet, they locked in his room and vanished. “Maaf karna (Excuse us),” said one of them, making the sign of the cross as they left the place.
The robbers took his mobile too, although Father Thekkekut pleaded with them not to take it. They left it outside the presbytery and the police have given it to fingerprint experts.
The short-statured priest somehow managed to free himself and get out of the room.
On being informed, the town police rushed to the church and inspected the house and filed a case against the miscreants.
The town CCTV camera footage showed three masked young people going on a scooter. The police have gone to the neighbouring state of Odisha to identify and nab the culprits, Father Thekkekut said June 20.
Police Official Garima Dadar briefed the media that it was the first time the church had been looted, although there had been thefts in the local temples. But, she said, it was shocking that this had happened during the day.
Father Thekkekut said he first suspected them to be Hindu radicals, but later realised they were mere robbers.
Father Thekkekut lives alone in the 46-year-old parish of some 100 parishioners. The Sisters of the Congregation of Teresian Carmelites manage an English medium higher-secondary school in the campus. Their convent lies next to the church.
Father Thekkekut was earlier attacked by some masked miscreants at night in 2009 in his previous Jairam Nagar mission. The police could not nab the culprits until now, since the priest could not recognize the masked men.