The top court in India’s northeastern Meghalaya state has issued contempt of court notices against five Salesian priests for demolishing a build-ing, ignoring a petition that sought the court’s intervention to protect it. Meghalaya High Court on Jan. 28 issued notices to the priests – Saji Stephen, Arcadius Puwein, Edmund Gomes, Dianetius Fernandez and Cyril Tirkey – asking them to explain “why they should not be punished for criminal contempt” of the court.
The bench Chief Justice I P Mukerji and Justice W Dieng-doh issued the notice and scheduled Feb. 24 for the next hearing. The priests are ma-nagement officials of the Salesian-run Don Bosco Tech-nical School in Shillong, the state capital. The fiasco centres on demolishing the building of St. Anthony’s Lower Primary School, which is on the Don Bosco Technical School cam-pus. Last December, a public interest litigation (PIL) challe-nged the plans to demolish the school building and sought court intervention to help protect it as a heritage building. The school’s director, Saji Stephen, told that they demolished the building after obtaining permission from the state government. He said the school, with some 1,200 students, continues functioning in other buildings on the same campus. During the previous hearing on Dec. 9, the court “neither imposed any order to maintain the status quo, nor any stay on dismantling the dilapidated building.