Police say they have arrested 22 people from a crowd of over 100 people who vandalized the Lady of Fatima Church in Kundapalli village. They broke statues of Jesus and the Blessed Mother, the crucifix and left furniture in disarray.

“All the attackers belong to the village where the church was built,” Anantha Chari, investigating police officer of the case, told ucanews.com.

George Reddy, a layman, donated land for the church. He applied for permission to construct a church but was never given the go ahead, Chari said.

“The villagers had objected two or three times to the construction,” he said.

The new church was blessed by Archbishop Thumma Bala of Hyderabad on May 13 but the church had not yet been used for service. Finishing touches to the building were ongoing.

Archbishop Bala told ucanews.com that the church was blessed to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Fatima “otherwise we would have waited a few more months.”

The prelate said that the attack could have happened because the Catholic Church is getting a bad name due to “aggressive preaching” by leaders of the Pentecostal churches in the area.

Pentecostal preachers are going around villages condemning other faiths, telling people they are not saved except in Christ and converting them. It is creating trouble for the Catholic Church, he said.

“Local anger is shown [by attacking churches] as the general public cannot differentiate between a Catholic or other denominations. They see the cross and consider the person a Christian,” Archbishop Bala said.

This is not the first time Christian places of worship have come under attack in the country. In August 2016, Hindu extremists stopped the construction of a church building in Chhattisgarh State accusing Christians of illegal conversion activities.

India’s tribal Catholic bishops have sought the intervention of President Pranab Mukherjee to ensure the rights of millions of tribal people.

The memorandum signed by tribal bishops from six states said, they were “saddened” by the policies of state governments that have trampled over tribal people’s rights. They want the president “to protect the land, forest and socio-cultural rights of tribal people,” the May 10 memorandum said.

“Land is the only means of livelihood and sustenance” for most tribal people, as 90 percent of them are dependent on agriculture or allied activities in their ancestral land, the bishops said. The present federal and most state governments, however, “have taken various actions to alienate tribal people from their land on a massive scale to facilitate industrialists.”

In the most recent example, Jharkhand government amended two laws that guaranteed the protection of tribal land used for agriculture. The government declared their land as non-agricultural and, since non-agricultural land does not come under the purview of protective legislation, tribal people can be deposed.

Father Stanislaus Tirkey, secretary of the Indian Catholic bishops’ office for tribal people told ucanews.com that indigenous people are facing the same problems every state and “we plan to address it collectively.”