Supporters of hardline Vishwa Hindu Parishad Hindu group hold tridents in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, India. | REUTERS
While India is going through a deadly second wave of COVID-19, the persecution of Christians carries on. Radical Hindu nationalists shot dead a 52-year-old Christian man, who was the father of a pastor, and wielded swords and sickles to attack other family members, according to a report.
About 15 Hindu nationalist men attacked the family of Pastor Ramesh Bumbariya at his home in the Bansawra District in the northwestern state of Rajasthan on Tuesday, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported, saying the family was attacked because they refused to renounce their Christian faith.
Hindu American Foundation via Facebook
The Hindu American Foundation advocacy group said, earlier this month, that it was suing four activists, academic Audrey Truschke, and a journalist for two articles published in
Al Jazeera that it claims are defamatory.
The lawsuit has sparked a debate over free speech in the US, with hundreds of activists and scholars criticising the defamation case and standing in solidarity with those named in it.
The
Al Jazeeraarticles, published in April, said that federal Covid-19 relief funding amounting to $833,000 had been given to the Hindu American Foundation and four other US foundations which, the reports alleged, had “ ties to Hindu supremacist and religious groups”.
While India is going through a deadly second wave of COVID-19, the persecution of Christians carries on. Radical Hindu nationalists shot dead a 52-year-old Christian man, who was the father of a pastor, and wielded swords and sickles to attack other family members, according to a report.
A family member mourns next to the body of a COVID-19 coronavirus victim in a hospital in Mahua on May 18, 2021, after Cyclone Tauktae hit the west coast of India with powerful winds and driving rain, leaving at least 20 people dead. | SAM PANTHAKY/AFP via Getty Images
Father Victor David, parish priest of Our Lady of Happy Voyage in Howrah, India, died from COVID-19 last Thursday at the Mercy Hospital hours after Sister Pranita Rai, principal of St. Teresaâs School in Kidderpore, died from the virus too.
The two missionaries of the Catholic Church died as the faithful were observing the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, according to The Times of India. And as more than 4,000 people die daily from the virus in that country, more than 160 priests have reportedly died in the past five weeks. Some 120 of them died between April 1 and April 15, Father Suresh Mathew, the editor of Indian Currents, told CRUX.