A 6-year-old Dalit girl has been found dead in Kampur (Uttar Pradesh). The little girl had disappeared on the eve of the Deepavali festival (last November 15) from the Ghatampur area. She was found with signs of torture, rape, with an open ribcage and stolen lungs. Police say the little girl’s lungs were removed to perform some magical rituals, with the belief that this could help a woman give birth to a son. The suspects – Ankul Kuril, 20, and Beeran, 31, were arrested and confessed to giving the victim’s lungs to Parshuram Kuril to perform the ritual. The latter’s wife was also arrested because, despite knowing about the murder, she said nothing to anyone.
India is considered one of the country’s most at risk for women. According to official statistics, there is one rape every 15 minutes. In 2019, crimes against women grew by 7.9% compared to the previous year. But it is above all little girls who fall victim.
On November 16, also in Uttar Pradesh, in the district of Fatehpur, the bodies of two Dalit sisters aged 8 and 12 were found in a pond. Their family claims that their daughters went to the fields in the afternoon to pick vegetables, but they never came back. They were killed after a failed rape attempt. Both bodies have eye wound marks.
“These unspeakable attacks on girls have become a ‘chronic disease’,” says Msgr. Felix Machado, Secretary General of the Indian Bishops. “Our girls – he continues – are the most vulnerable in society and our Dalit girls are the most exploited and weakest in society and these violations are extremely worri-some.  This is a Spiritual failure.”

The registration of Christian marriages in Mumbai has come to a halt after the retirement of the marriage officer in July.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, newlywed couples are forced to travel to Pune to get their marri-age certificates stamped by state government authorities. Activists Godfrey Pimenta and Nicholas Almeida of the Watchdog Foundation have urged the state government to appoint a new officer in Mumbai at the earliest. Advocate Vivian D’Souza, Rita D’Souza as well as Tulip Miranda, president of the Bombay East Indian Association, have signed the request.
Pimenta said, “Mumbai has a Catholic popu-lation of 10 lakhs (1 million), and every year, thousands of couples get married in the 100-plus Catholic Churches that are located in Mumbai alone. The post of marriage officer remains vacant ever since the previous incumbent Ashish Lopez retired a few months ago.”
Pimenta explained the procedure saying, “Couples are required to procure their marriage certificate from the local church where the nuptials were solemnized. The certificate is then attested by the chancellor attached to Archbishop House in Colaba, and subsequently by a notary public. Later, it is to be stamped by the state home department and finally by the marriage officer whose office is in Mantralaya.”
In the absence of the Mumbai appointee, couples are required to travel to Pune to get attestation done through the Commissioner of Social Welfare. Almeida said, “This is a matter of concern since Pune has a high number of Covid-19 cases. More-over, the journey is tedious. The state government should immediately fill the vacancy in Mumbai.” The archdiocese of Bombay expressed concern as well. Spokesman Fr Nigel Barrett said, “The situa-tion of having no registrar of Christian marriages is indeed true. It has been communicated to the government about the urgency to appoint a registrar and we are hopeful it will be addressed soon.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s intervention led to Pakistan escaping sanctions for lack of religious freedom and India stopped from being listed on a Special Watch List, said US Ambassador-at-Large for Inter-national Religious Freedom, Samuel Brownback.
“There were several reco-mmendations that the Secretary [Pomoeo] did not follow, and this was one of them,” he said about keeping India away from the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list. The US Commission for International Religious Free-dom (USCIRF) had recommend-ed that India be put in the CPC list because of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
Brownback said the US had privately discussed these issues with the Indian government at a high level, and will continue to get raised. Pompeo is “well aware” of the statute (CAA) and the issues associated with the Modi government. And as I said, he’s raised it at the highest levels, but just decided at this point in time not to place them on a CPC or a Special Watch List,” he said during a briefing on rollout of US action against religious freedom violators. Though Brownback was critical of India, he did not get baited by a question posed by a Pakistani-origin journalist who wanted to know why Pakistan was on CPC and India was not.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the southern Indian State of Karnataka has reconverted 23 people from five Christian families to Hindu-ism. A reconversion ceremony on Nov. 29 was organized by Anant Kumar Hegde, a BJP leader and MP for Uttara Kannada district. “Hegde was handpicked by the Hindutva hierarchy to create communal divisions and tension in the coastal belt of Karnataka,” Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, told UCA News.
“After BJP victories in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, the Sangh Parivar [fanatic group] moved with the speed and cunning of a barracuda to attack and weaken the constitutional institutions needed to transform Indian society into a more equal and just one.”
George said the BJP has used the twin weapons of a brute majority and communal polarization to implement laws and policies that have impacted most adversely those who are denied all rights and can make no claims to equality: women, Dalits, backward castes and tribal people.
“This advance towards a Hindu Rashtra [Hindu nation] is viewed with concern and alarm by many, but as far as the majority are concerned, they feel that only members of minority communities will be threatened while they themselves will be guaranteed some kind of a privileged status,” he added.

Assam is planning a law that will require the bride and groom to declare their religion and income in official documents a month before the wedding. Against the backdrop of many other BJP-ruled states bringing in laws to check “love jihad,” the Assam government says its aim is to “empower our sisters.”
The ruling BJP’s move comes ahead of polls in Assam next year, which the party is confident of winning. State Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said his govern-ment’s law was not entirely like the ones in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, but would be similar.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded 500 Christian and 112 Muslim candidates for the local body elections in Kerala.
If the BJP manages to win at least municipal corporations in these elections, it would brighten the party’s chances in the Kerala assembly elections scheduled to be held in 2021.
Kerala will elect its local bodies on December 8, 10 and 14 and the results are expected on December 16.
The state has total 27,656,579 voters: 13,172,629 male, 14, 483,668 female and 282 trans-gender. More than 75,000 candidates are in the fray for the polls after November 24, the last day for withdrawing nominations.
The voters will choose from 54,494 candidates for 941 grama panchayats. The candidates contesting in 152 block panchayats number 6,877 while 1,317 will fight it out for 14 district panchayats.
The 87 municipalities in the state will see 10,339 candidates and the six corporations have 1,986 candidates
At 8,497, Malappuram tops the list candidates in the fray, followed by Ernakulam 7,256, Thrissur 7,020 and Palakkad 6,532.