President of India
Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil
Release International (RI) (http://www.releaseinternational.org/) has reported that in India Hindu extremists have been accused of murdering a pastor in Assam, just days before he was due to finish building a new church for his congregation.
RI noted that the Pastor, Ajit Bansi, a missionary for Gospel for Asia, was ambushed by gunmen as he went to buy materials for the final stage of his construction project and that his three companions were also shot dead on May 20.
It said that Pastor Ajit served a church of about 60 Christians and left behind a wife and two small children adding that he was one of hundreds of missionaries risking their lives to share Jesus' love in the area, “It is extremely sad that this pastor never saw his dream fulfilled.”
“Pastor Ajit's death is just one of a litany of attacks against the church in India last month. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, about 40 Bajrang Dal extremists raided a church in Kanpur recently, accusing Pastor Dalayu Sonam of 'forcible conversion'. They beat the pastor, accused his wife of running a brothel and threatened to kill their baby son,” RI said.
In another related report, the RI said that in Pakistan, Christian families are being driven out of the village after challenging abuses.
It observed that about 250 Christian families have been forced to leave their homes in Punjab, after they dared to challenge the abuse suffered by their women and girls adding that the head of the predominantly Muslim village No. 123/10R, Katcha Khoh, ordered the expulsions in apparent retaliation for complaints made by four Christian men against their Muslim neighbors.
“The four had dared to protest that Christian women and girls in the village, who mostly worked as domestic servants in Muslim households, were being 'routinely' sexually assaulted. Most Christian men in the village worked as agricultural laborers for Muslim landowners,” RI stated.
RI said that they have not involved police in the situation for fear of being falsely accused under Pakistan's blasphemy laws and that their fears are not unfounded adding that two Christian men in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town, Karachi, have just been charged with 'desecrating the Koran', after they complained to police that radical Muslims had been 'looking for pages of the Islamic scripture' in their rubbish bins. The men – Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William – and their wives are now in hiding and in fear of their lives.
For more information on Christian persecution, log on to Release International website: http://www.releaseinternational.org/
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