MUMBAI, India – In India, two anti-Christian incidents in the state of Odisha have disturbed the peace-loving Christian community, which has already been traumatized by harassment by right-wing extremists.
On Sunday, Sister Rachana Nayak was travelling with four women candidates and two male youths from Odisha when she was intercepted by Bajrang Dal activists on a train.
The Christians were asked to disembark at Khurda, near Bhubaneswar, amid allegations of “conversion activities.” The suspected Bajrang Dal activists forced them off the train and they were detained for 18 hours at a police station in Odisha on fabricated charges of trafficking in women and illegal conversions.
Nayak was released after she proved that her six companions were all Christians by birth and were travelling for enrolment in training courses.
“They had boarded the Rajya Rani Express from Berhampur on Saturday evening. One of the young men happened to be the nun’s younger brother,” Sister Sujata Jena, an advocate on the team of Women Lawyers who rescued them, told Crux.
“They were headed for Jharsuguda, from where they planned to travel to Chhattisgarh where the girls would have received training in various skills and in spoken English,” she said.
Jena said the four young women had been selected through a rigorous process of career counselling, and all of them were Catholics.
“Some people began heckling them on the train and accused the nun of involvement in religious conversions,” she said.
“As soon as the train reached Khurda Junction around 11 pm on Saturday, around 30 people gathered and began abusing the nun and the four girls. They forced the entire group off the train,” Jena said.
“Apart from religious conversions, they accused the nun of trafficking in women. The Railway Protection Force intervened and took all of them to the police station,” she continued.
This story was originally published in cruxnow.com. Read the full story here.