TRIVANDRUM, 26 September 2004 — Nine volunteers, including three nuns, of Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity were attacked by suspected Hindu hard-liners in the northern Kerala city of Calicut yesterday.
The condition of one of the nuns, Kusumam, 43, who heads the Charity’s Sneha Bhavan at Olavana, is reportedly serious with head injuries in attacks with sharp-edged weapons.
All are admitted to the Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences.
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said he had instructed the state police to take stringent action against the attackers. “This is a blot on the record of communal harmony in Kerala,” he told Arab News.
According to the police, two Sisters of Charity, Sherlina, 46, and Rose Merlin, 40, reached a Dalit colony to distribute rice and other provisions to the local community living in abject poverty. Six drunken men mistook them for missionaries engaged in religious conversions and attacked them.
They snatched away their chains with crucifix. Their driver Saju, 30, was beaten up. The victims took refuge in the nearby police station.
Those who came to their rescue, including Kusumam, Sharlotte, 43, Varghese, 39, Bernard, 26, who is a Kenyan national, and Varghese, 37, and their driver Anto, 26, were also attacked with swords and iron bars by some 35 people. Bernard was badly injured.
Assistant Commissioner of Police Chakkeeri Aboobacker said the attackers were yet to be identified.
But local residents said they were all outsiders and none of them was known to them. They said Sneha Bhavan was engaged in charity activities in the Mambuzhakkad Methal Nalucent colony for the past one and half years.
The radical Hindu outfit Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological patron of main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, has recently been active in nearby areas. The attackers also shouted slogans in support of the RSS and the BJP.
There are five nuns and 50 aged and mentally challenged inmates in Sneha Bhavan. “We have no connection with evangelic activities,” she said.
The Hindu Aikya Vedi, the apex body of Hindu outfits including the RSS, denied involvement in the incident.
“We strongly condemn the attack. It’s all creation of some miscreants,” Vedi General Secretary Kummanam Rajashekharan said. “But the police should investigate the circumstances that led to the attack,” he said.
