Attacks on Christians: NHRC team for Orissa, Gujarat

Venkatachalaiah said that the Commission had taken “suo motu cognizance’ of Saturday’s incident in Bhubaneshwar, where a German missionary and his two minor sons were torched alive by Bajrang Dal activists. He called upon the Governments concerned to account for such developments and said that a special investigative team under Karthikeyan would “immediately visit” Orissa. But he did not comment on the time-period, saying that “investigations take their own time,” but added that Karthikeyan was an “able officer and knew what to do”.

Orissa would be first on the Director General’s list but he would also go to Gujarat (toinvestigate the allegations of `forced conversions’) and then the Union Government, the Judge said. “Today I wrote to the Gujarat and Orissa Governments to tell us what happened and what they’re going to do”.

The situation, when “people are killed on religious grounds… is capable of no explanation,” said the Judge who was `greatly disturbed” by the incident. He dismissed queries of any `foreign hand’ in the matter and believed that “somewhere, something messed up”.