By Matters India Reporter
Jashpur, June 13, 2023: A newly professed nun, who was jailed along with four others for alleged conversion charges, were on June 13 granted bail by a court in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.
Sister Vibha Kerketta was arrested June 6 and jailed the next day along with her mother and three others after her family organized a Mass in their home to thank God for her profession in the Daughters of St Anne, a Ranchi-based congregation.
The family lived at Schoolpara lane of Balachhapar village in Jashpur district, Chhattisgarh.
A group of Hindu fundamentalists, who barged into the house, accused her mother and others for conducting a healing session and insulting other religions.
A magistrate sent the nun and the other four to jail and set the bail hearing for June 13.
The Sessions Court of Jashpur accepted their bail application on furnishing 15,000 rupees by each of them, Jesuit Father Fulgence Lakra, a lawyer, told Matters India.
They were released in the evening and Sister Lily Grace Topno, superior general of the congregation, thanked God as well as the Church authorities and their well wishers for the good news.
Sister Kerketta had taken her first vows on December 8, 2022, and went home after six months. Her family organized the Mass to follow a local tradition to welcome a new priest or nun with a religious function. Some 60 people had attended Sister Kerketta’s function that started at 6 pm.
The mob came after the function and questioned the nun and her family why they had become Christians. The mob snatched rosaries worn by the Catholic women and torn a copy of the Bible in the house. One of them slapped the nun’s mother.
On June 11, the entire congregation of the Daughters of St. Anne prayed and fasted the whole day for Sister Kerketta.
“I am deeply saddened and anxious about it. Therefore, may I ask you for your earnest prayers, sacrifices and mortifications so that with the intervention of God, Sr Vibha Kerketta, DSA, and family members may be released on bail from the jail,” said a letter from the congregation’s superior general Sister Lily Grace Topno.
Sister Topno and two others on June 12 visited Sister Kerketta and others in the jail.
On June 10, a nine-member Catholic delegation met the Assistant Superintendent of Police of Jashpur and submitted a memorandum questioning the police’s biased action.
It pointed out that a woman can be arrested only in the presence of women police personnel. “Why was no police woman present when Sister Kerketta and her mother were arrested? Why were they taken away at night against the law?” the memorandum asked.
It denied that the jailed Catholics had violated laws that forbid “deliberate and malicious acts” to outrage religious feelings of others or promote beliefs,” enmity between different groups.