ASSEMBLY POLL '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS '98
ARCHIVES

Anti-Christian acts spread to Bombay

Archbishop of Bombay Ivan Dias has demanded that the Maharashtra government and the city police take strict action against the men who threatened nuns of Mother's Teresa's Missionaries of Charity and prevented them from distributing medicines.

Archbishop Dias said he has taken up the matter with Chief Minister Narayan Rane and expressed serious concern over the threat to "religious women who have been selflessly serving the cause of the poor and catering to the education of young girls since so many years".

He said that on February 3, sisters of the Missionaries of Charity at Vile Parle in north-west Bombay had gone with their ambulance to the Kandivli-Lokhandwala Complex sector when some men approached the vehicle and demanded that they leave forthwith.

A couple of ruffians threw down the medicines displayed on a table and the syrups and tonics in the ambulance outside. They also hit the driver and ordered him to leave the place, Archbishop Dias said.

The sisters lodged a complaint with the police who accompanied them back to the site and questioned onlookers who were still gathered around the ambulance.

The people told the police that the nuns came there every week and distributed free medicines to the people and explained how the sick are cured. They said they could not understand why the men had treated the sisters so rudely.

The archbishop said that earlier, on January 28, at about 1600 hours, seven men armed with revolvers had tried to force open a side door at the Convent of St Joseph at Vile Parle. Awakened by violent banging on the door, the sisters raised an alarm and the assailants fled.

He acknowledged that police responded immediately to a phone-call by the sisters and since then have kept a night patrol at the convent.

He and Bishop Ferdinand Fonseca visited both places and wrote to Rane informing him about the incidents and demanding immediate action.

While lengthening the list of attacks on Christian personnel and institutions in the past few months, the incidents are destroying India's image as a communally harmonious and peace-loving nation, they pointed out.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report