The persecution of Christians in India continues to escalate. Note that this is not just mob violence, but is in this case (and others we have seen), the persecution is sanctioned by Indian officials: in this story, we read that the victim “informed a police official, who only told him to peacefully resolve the matter himself.”
As Christianity continues to grow in the country, Hindu radicals are feeling increasingly threatened, and are lashing out more frequently, with no pushback from law enforcement officials. Please pray that peace would prevail for the Christians in India, and that the light of Holy Orthodoxy would again dawn in this land to which St. Thomas the Apostle first brought the Gospel.
For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in India, see here.
“Church Decimated after Upper-Caste Hindus Stir Hostilities in Andhra Pradesh, India,” Morning Star News, February 13, 2020:
HYDERABAD, India (Morning Star News) – Attacks and harassment of a house church in southern India have decimated the 40-member congregation and left the pastor injured and demoralized.
Pastor Eswara Rao Appalabattula on Jan. 27 pleaded with about a dozen local residents to stop building a wall meant to block people from attending worship services at his home in L.B. Patnam village, Andhra Pradesh. Led by a local Hindu extremist, the group attacked him, breaking his hand, he said.
“They wanted to build a wall right in front of the church and ban us from using the path,” Pastor Appalabattula told Morning Star News. “I pleaded with them to not do so. But the group of at least six neighbors, both male and female, punched me in my stomach several times and pushed me to the floor.”
They picked up a wooden pole and started beating his hands repeatedly with it, he said.
“I was lying there on the floor screaming for help,” he said. “My wife came running and begged them to stop beating me – it was traumatic.”
The attack topped a month of hostilities and years of opposition against the pastor and his wife, who are in their 60s, from Hindu villagers furious at the presence of a church in their community. On Jan. 5, a Hindu priest had led them to his home, where they threatened to kill his wife, Karuna Appalabattula, as she was doing chores outside, she said.
“I did not go to fight with them – but I was panicked,” Karuna Appalabattula told Morning Star News. “I did not know what to do. I asked them, ‘What is this you are doing? Why are you after us?’”
The Hindu priest picked up a large log of wood and came running toward her, she said.
“He kept screaming that he would kill me,” she said. “I was crying for help. But their priest abused me in extremely foul language. They called me names they would never use for a mother, wife, sister or any female member of their families. He called me a Christian prostitute and warned me that he would kill my husband.”
Trembling in fear, she and her husband locked themselves inside the house, she said.
Pastor Appalabattula said the Hindu villagers had stopped worshippers from coming to services throughout January.
“They would threaten and abuse them in foul language and not let them even park their motorbikes in the area,” he said. “Even before they stop at the church, they are chased and sent away.”
Police: ‘Resolve It Yourself’
He informed a police official, who only told him to peacefully resolve the matter himself.
“He told me that these issues between religious groups may cause riots and advised me not to escalate the matter,” Pastor Appalabattula said. “We had kept quiet and were busy with the ministry, but the following Friday [Jan. 7] and the Sundays on Jan. 12, 19 and 26, the members of the church were stopped on the road and were threatened that they would be brutally attacked if they continued gathering in L.B. Patnam village.”
Throughout the month Hindu villagers shouted obscenities when passing their home, trying to provoke them into a fight, Karuna Appalabattula said.
“Not only were our lives but the lives of believers who come for prayers also in danger,” she said. “That entire month, they did not allow us to be at peace.”
On Jan. 27, they informed police that the Hindu villagers had begun digging a trench for construction of the wall. Officers arrived only after the ensuing attack, she said.
Police told her to order a motorized rickshaw taxi to take Pastor Appalabattula to the hospital, they said, adding that a church member who had also been beaten wanted to accompany them, but officers told him to flee for his life. At the village clinic, doctors said they did not have facilities adequate to treat him and suggested they go to the larger hospital in Vizag town.
“I telephoned some of the church members, but they were scared that they too may come under the attack,” Karuna Appalabattula said. “The doctors at the town hospital in Vizag informed us that his right hand has been fractured.”
Officers at the Cheedikada police station registered a First Information Report (FIR) against 11 villagers but not the Hindu extremist leader, Suresh Panchata, Pastor Appalabattula said. He said he reminded officers that he had complained to them several times since 2011 about Panchata, an upper-caste Hindu, and about telephone threats he had received the previous day….
