The Bombay High Court has permitted the Jesuits to initiate separate proceedings to clear Father Stan Swamy’s name from accusation in the Bhima Koregaon Elgar Parishad case.
The Jesuit Adivasi activist died July 5 under police custody at Holy Family hospital in Mumbai, western India. The National Investigation Agency arrested him October 8, 2020 from his residence near Ranchi, the capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
Father Swamy was arrested the 16th civil liberties activist to be arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for alleged anti-national activities.
The NIA accused 84-year-old Jesuit of being a member of banned Maoist group that conspired to overpower the Indian government.
On November 24, the bench comprising Justices Nitin Jamdar and Sarang Kotwal heard Jesuit Father Frazer Macarenhas’ interim application that sought to clear Father Swamy’s name from the allegations.
The plea from the former principal of Mumbai’s Saint Xavier’s College urged the court also urged the court to order a mandatory judicial inquiry under section 176 (1-A) of the Code of Criminal Procedure into his elderly confrere’s death, reported Live Law, a website that reports legal matters.

Church officials in India say suicide cases in India have increased mainly because of government’s wrong economic reforms and insensitive policies.
“Many have come to a rock-bottom with no jobs, no income and no hope for a better tomorrow,” says Father Faustine Lobo, regional director of social apostolate of bishops in Karnataka, a southern Indian state.
The priest, who is engaged in grassroots works, also says demonetization and increasing fuel prices on a daily basis has hit the common man directly.
According to the recently released Indian government data, an average 30 suicide cases took place daily in the country in 2020, allegedly due to “joblessness, bankruptcy and poverty.”
The report published by the National Crimes Records Bureau says as many as 10,662 suicide cases in 2020 were directly linked to poverty — 5,213 due to bankruptcy, 3,548 suicides joblessness and 1,901 cases from other forms of poverty. “The increase in deaths by poverty went up by 69 percent from the previous year, while suicides from joblessness hiked by 24 percent,” says the report as quoted in the Times of India.
Father Lobo says the hike suicide case indicates the frustration people go through because of the government’s pro corporate policies and actions that are “totally against common man’s welfare in the country.” He said bankruptcy and joblessness contribute to poverty and the crime bureau’s report indicates a state of “utter hopeless situation” people now face.

To achieve this goal, Hindu extremists shaved their heads and put coconuts in their hands as part of a Hindu religious ritual.
Such acts were accompanied by the threat of seizing land, homes and properties owned by Christians and having them denied access to publicly owned forest land if they did not comply.
“This is a barbaric act and an evident forced conversion,” said Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC).
This, George explained, is “A violation of the fundamental right to religious freedom and respect for the dignity of every person”.
It is “also a way to publicly humiliate, mock and insult Christians, whose daily life is constantly in the crosshairs of right-wing extremist nationalist groups.”
What is more, it “is not an isolated incident. Christians in Chhattisgarh live constantly in fear of Ghar Wapsi campaigns, as conversion to Hinduism is called.”
Already last July in the nearby district of Sukma, the police superintendent Sunil Sharma had issued a circular asking officers to raise the level of attention towards the activities of Christian missionaries who, he wrote, “are continuously travelling to the interior and influencing local tribals by luring them with perks to make them accept Christianity.”
“In Chhattisgarh,” Sajan George said, “anti-conversion laws were made tougher in 2006. But an amendment expressly provides that the ‘return’ to the ‘ancestral’ religion should not be considered a conversion.”
In reality, the vast majority of tribal people have never really professed the Hindu religion.

Tribal Christians in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand are delighted after the federal government awarded one of its highest civilian awards to Chutni Mahto for her campaign to end witchcraft.
Mahto was presented with the Padma Shri (noble one in blossom) by Indian President Ram Nath Kovind in the national capital New Delhi on Nov. 9.
Mahto, herself a victim of witch-hunting, has campaigned to create public awareness against the inhuman practice in her home state since 1995.
Data from the federal National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that between 2000 and 2016 more than 2,500 people were killed in witch hunts. An average of 156 people, mostly women and children, are killed each year across India due to the practice of witchcraft.
Rights activists say the actual numbers could be much higher as many cases are not reported to police or are reported wrongly to save those involved.
Murder driven by the belief in black magic is common in Jharkhand. In 2019, the state reported 27 deaths related to allegations of witchcraft. Up to September 2020, 19 deaths had taken place over alleged witchcraft, according to police data.

Hindu activists have disrupted Sunday prayer services in two Indian states alleging forced religious conversions that were denied by Christians.
The first incident was reported on Nov. 7 from the southern state of Karnataka, where members of the Sri Ram Sene (Ram’s army) barged into a Christian prayer hall in Maratha Colony in Belgavi (formerly Belgaum) and locked in the devotees.
Police had to rush to open doors of the locked-up hall and asked those inside to go home.
Sene members alleged that Pastor Lema Cherian was con-verting poor Hindus to Chri-stianity by organizing prayer services. Pastor Cherian denied the allegation. “We have been organizing prayer services every Sunday and all are free to join,” he said.
He said that the local police were informed about the Sun-day meeting and nobody was forced to attend it. “We are free to practice any faith of our choice and it is our fundamental right. No one can infringe upon it,” the pastor added. But Assistant Commissioner of Police Ajjol Chandrappa told media that a Hindu man who attended the prayer service had filed a complaint alleging conversion. The police were verifying the facts and may register a case, he said.

Pope Francis will canonize Devasahayam Pillai, together with six others, during a canonization Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on May 15, 2022.
The announcement was made November 9 by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. It follows the Ordinary Public Consistory of May 3 this year whereby the Pope had authorized the canonizations, without however setting a date for the ceremony because of the health emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Blessed Lazarus (Devasahayam)
Blessed Lazar is the only martyr among those set to be canonized.
Blessed Lazarus, known as Devasahayam, was a Nair caste in India. Converted to Catholicism by a Jesuit priest in 1745, Devasahayam Pillai took the name Lazarus.

A Catholic priest who tried to help two nuns illegally detained in last month’s Mau incident reported from the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is planning to approach the high court to save himself from likely arrest.
“I am planning to move the state’s top court to discharge me from the case I was not involved in any way,” Norbertine Father Bartholomis Minj said, referring to the alleged violation of the anti-conversion law in Mau for which police took several Christians into custody following a complaint by a pro-Hindu group on Oct. 10.
Sisters Gracy Monteiro and Roshni Minj of the Ursuline Franciscan congregation were at the local bus stop when they were accosted by Hindu activists and forcibly taken to the police station on suspicion they were part of a Protestant group suspected to be involved in religious conversion.
Father Minj rushed to the police station after learning about the nuns’ illegal detention. “When asked, I told the officers that I was principal of St. Joseph School and left the place after meeting the nuns,” he told on November 11.
The priest later learned that the police had registered a case against a school principal with-out naming him. To his shock, a couple of days ago an officer came to his office and interrogated him for over an hour, prompting him to file for anticipatory bail before the district court.
The nuns were released the same day after the detained Protestants told police they were not part of their group.

Jesuit Father Cedric Prakash has won this year’s “Louis Careno Award” for excellence in journalism.
The Indian Catholic Press Association, the national body of Catholic print media persons, on November 8 selected Father Prakash for the annual award in recognition of his bold writings against communalism and fundamentalism gaining ground globally.
The association will confer the award on the 70-year-old Ahmedabad-based Jesuit on Decem-ber 1 during its 26th National Convention of Christian Journalists.
Father Prakash’s “incisive, thought-provoking writings on various subjects have broken new grounds. His razor-sharp analysis of sociocultural and political issues, especially relating to communalism and fundamentalism, has led to soul-searching debates in the civil society and the secular world,” says a press release signed by the association president Ignatius Gonsalves and secretary Capuchin Father Suresh Mathew.

India has witnessed a significant rise in violence against Christians this year with 305 incidents recorded across 21 states during the past nine months. Surprisingly, official cognizance of the targeted violence was lax with only 30 complaints registered by police so far.
September had the highest number of incidents with 69, followed by 50 in August, 37 in January, 33 in July, 27 each in March, April and June, 20 in February and 15 in May. These figures were published in a fact-finding report by the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) and United Against Hate and United Christian Forum (UCF) and released at a press conference in New Delhi on Oct. 21
Christian Prio Sadhana Lanse and her daughters Pearl and Eva from Roorkee presented horrific details of the attack they suffered.
Eva recalled how an armed mob of around 200 shouting slogans like “Jai Shri Ram” (Hail Lord Ram) and “Vande Mataram” (I bow to thee, motherland) barged in, vandalized a prayer house and manhandled the Christian faithful on Oct. 3.
“We feel unsafe there and fear for our lives,” she said, adding that police made no arrests despite naming the main attackers in their complaints with evidence of the violence and destruction they caused.
Uttar Pradesh in northern India ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) topped the list with 66 incidents of attacks this year, followed by Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh (47), tribal people’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-ruled Jharkhand (30) and BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh (26).
Karnataka in the south, also ruled by the BJP, witnessed a spurt in violence against Christians with 32 incidents.

Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore has condemned the continuous harassment on the Christian Missionaries in the state and questioned the wisdom behind conducting a survey on their presence and activities in Karnataka.
The Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Department in Karnataka has ordered the officers to conduct a survey of both official and non-official Christian missionaries in the southern Indian state, following a discussion on Christian conversions in the state on October 13.
“Why is the government interested in making survey of the religious personnel and places of worship only of Christian community?” asked the Bishop in a statement issued October 15.
Instead, “let the government take the count of education institutions and health centers run by the Christian missionaries, which will give a fare idea of the service that is rendered by the Christian community to the nation building and how many people are converted in these places and institutions,” he challenged.
“We consider this exercise as futile and unnecessary. There is no good that will come out of it,” stated the archbishop. In fact, in the background of the conversion boggy and anti-religious feelings that are being whipped up, it is dangerous to make such surveys, he added.