Home Christian News Pastor in Central India Attacked for Police Report on Prior Assault, Expulsion

Pastor in Central India Attacked for Police Report on Prior Assault, Expulsion

The assailants fled as they saw the pastor’s relatives approaching. He had severe internal injuries and required stitches on his head wound, he said.

“I had swelling on my neck for weeks and could not eat solid food for three days because of pain in my throat,” Pastor Kirade told Morning Star News.

Retaliation

The assailants indicated they were upset at the pastor for filing a police report about the assault in March and reporting ill-treatment of his daughter to school authorities, he said.

They had threatened to kill him if he returned to the village, and after the first assault Pastor Kirade initially had refrained from going to police, fearing it would prompt just such an attack. Other Christian leaders and organizations, however, later persuaded him to do so, he said.

As they beat him, the six men–Laxman, two sons, his son-in-law, and two nephews–along with his wife and niece asked him why he had approached police, he said.

“They insisted that I immediately revoke my police complaint,” he said, adding that they also asked him why he was still in the district and rebuked him for reporting the attack on his 9-year-old daughter to school authorities.

Two days after the March 9 attack that forced the Christian family to take refuge in the jungle–with the assailants looting the belongings from their former home–Laxman’s wife had stopped the pastor’s daughter as she returned from school, pulled her hair and threatened to beat her to death if she saw her in the village again, Pastor Kirade said.

“Laxman’s wife dragged my daughter by her hair and traumatized her by saying that she will spill the container of boiling milk on her and then throw her in the village well and kill her,” he told Morning Star News.

Pastor Kirade had informed a schoolteacher about the assault, and the teacher had gone to Laxman’s home, telling them not to threaten her and to let her appear for exams, he said.

As the pastor feared, these attempts to obtain justice led to violence against him, with the Laxman family stopping him on his motorbike, pulling him off it and dragging him down by the collar, he said.

“I begged them to let me go,” he said. “I told them I never returned to my village or my home–I am living with my family far from the village, I have never entered the village since I left, then why are they hitting me?”

Police Non-Cooperation

The pastor went to the Pandhana police station in Khandwa District, where officers told him to go to Jhirniya police station in Khargone District, 22 miles away.