By Matters India Reporter

Ambikapur, Feb 8, 2024: A Catholic nun has been remanded in judicial custody in connection with the death by suicide of a school girl in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

A court in Ambikapur, a major city in Sarguja district, on February 7 remanded Carmelite Sister Mercy to jail after police charged her with abetting the suicide of the sixth grader the previous night.

The girl, who studied in Carmel School in Ambikapur, accused the nun in her suicide note of torturing her, forcing her to end her life.

The 30-year-old school is managed by the Congregation of Mother Carmel, which is based in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Father Lucian Kujur, director of education in Ambikapur diocese, denied the charge against the nun saying, “There was no truth in it.”

According to the priest, the nun had taken their girl’s identity card after she was found in the toilet along with three other girls during class hours. Sister Mercy had asked the girls to bring their parents the following day.

Father Kujur denied that the nun had tortured the girl.

Sister Mercy, who teaches in the English medium senior higher secondary school, “did not teach the girl” but only took her identity card as she had stayed away from classes despite being in the school, the priest told Matters India February 8.

Soon after the news of the girl’s suicide spread, right wing Hindu groups protested in front of the school demanding the arrest of Sr Mercy and the school principal, another nun.

The police subsequently arrested Sister Mercy and deployed police personnel to guard the school.

Currently, “the school is closed and we expect to reopen it very soon after the situation normalizes,” Father Kujur said.

Christians witnessed hostilities from right wing Hindu groups for the alleged charges of religious conversion especially among the tribal people in the state.

More than 1,000 Christians were forced to flee their homes in 2022 after a group of tribals allegedly associated with the right-wing Hindu groups opposed their faith in Christianity in the tribal-dominated Bastar region.

The mob assaulted them, looted their houses, destroyed crops and even opposed burial of their dead.

The state is currently ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, that heads also the federal coalition government.

Christians, mostly tribal people, make up 2 percent of the state’s more than 30 million population with more than 80 percent Hindus.