Remembering the crimes of India’s Dara Singh
Hindu nationalists hail the murderers of Christians such as the killer of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his sons The Christian community in India remembers Jan. 22, 1999, as the day Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines, who worked with leprosy patients in Odisha, and his young sons Timothy and Philip, were burned alive. It was on that day that the Western world really came face to face with the violence being meted out to the minuscule religious minority by the Hindutva extremist groups collectively known as the Sangh Parivar. The trio was sleeping in their jeep in a clearing in the Manourharpur-Baripada forest when they were surrounded by a mob led by Dara Singh, a local chief of the militant Bajrang Dal, who had gained a reputation as the scourge of cattle traders driving their animals through forest roads in the state on the east coast of India. Dara Singh had earlier slain a man called Rahman, a Muslim cattle trader. The Staines family massacre remained international news, both in the West and especially in his home country, Australia, for a long time. The triple deaths were horrendous. The father and sons had been set on fire as they slept. As the flames
Hindu Relatives Suspected of Killing Christian in India
NEW DELHI (Morning Star News) – Christians in eastern India suspect a church member’s Hindu family killed him last month for refusing to renounce his faith, sources said. In West Bengal state’s Gobindapur village, Jhargram District, Hindu relatives of Madhab Gorai had threatened to burn him to death and feared his faith jeopardized his daughter’s impending marriage, the sources said. Church members last saw the 46-year-old Gorai on Aug. 7, when his wife and adult son disrupted the start of a church service and threatened him, said Ashish Hansda, lay leader in charge of the Church of North India (CNI) congregation in the village. Gorai’s wife was carrying a bottle of gasoline, and his son was carrying a wooden baton, he said. In a scuffle outside the church building, Gorai’s wife and son threatened to burn him alive, Hansda said. Gorai’s wife and son had pressured him to perform Hindu marriage rituals at his daughter’s impending wedding, where according to custom the father of the bride would be required to worship sacred fire, said the pastor in charge of the church, the Rev. Subendu Soren. “Gorai refused to involve himself in Hindu worship practices that contradicted his Christian faith,” Pastor Soren told Morning Star News. Gorai’s
