BHOPAL, 3 December — A teacher, Sorita Toppo, of Dongra village of Sarguja district, working in a Christian missionary-run school was raped and murdered in her hometown in the central state of Chhattisgarh, police said yesterday.
An ax smeared with blood, believed to be used in the crime, have been recovered from near the body lying in a pool of blood in the jungles of Wadrafnagar. Police from the city of Raipur said Toppo, 22, was sexually assaulted and killed on Nov. 28 in the forests of Balrampur where she had gone to collect firewood.
The Catholic teacher was raped and hacked several times with knives, local police chief B.S. Thakur said, adding that a suspect has been detained in connection with the woman’s murder.
Toppo taught junior grade children at a missionary-run school in a remote hamlet some 500 km from her hometown, Thakur said.
Christians say attacks on churches, hospices, missionary-run schools and facilities have increased since Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power after general elections in late 1998.
Hindu groups accuse Christian missionaries of forcibly converting poor Hindus in rural areas — a charge church leaders strongly deny.
