Book of Integration Council New - Ministry of Home Affairs

Home Minister : I may request Mr N. Ram to make his statement please.
Shri N. Ram
Thank you very much, I think the report has many things the agenda has many items and
I would just like to focus on what we looked at recently, the media or sections of media,
namely the very serious situation that has arisen in Kandhamal district in Orissa. It took
quite a few weeks before the truth about this, anything like the truth about this, surfaced
and this despite letters written by various representatives of the Christian Community in
Orissa, notably Sister Nirmala, Superior General of the Missioneries of Charity and
Mother Teresa successor wrote letters to the Chief Minister of Orissa as well as to the
Prime Minister, specifying what had happened and by that I mean the particular incident
of the rape of the Nun in a place that was pretty close to the police outpost and the
brutalization of a Catholic priest. This was common knowledge, apparently among
Christians in Orissa. But it was covered up by the State Government and by fear I think
fear explain the absence of information on it, it took a long time. Anyway when it come
out, I think the response still most unsatisfactory. I just read the speech of Chief
Minister of Orissa, who prides himself on his modernity and secularism, rightly so from
his background but the explanation towards end on what happened fails to convince
anybody. Infact, it is unserious and I did not want to mention anything so specific as
this but we cannot get away with this kind of explanation on pages 15 & 16 of his
speech basically attributes what happened to conflict of interest in the matter of land
rights, employment opportunities and religion. Whereas everybody knows, the
organizations involved, the criminals involved, they have not been particularly coy
about who they are and this I think is a major failure, First on the part of the State
Government but also I think the Central Government must bear responsibility because
what was its, what was the Intelligence Agencies doing, what was official establishment
doing, why did they take more than a month to do the right thing and I think there has
been some improvement in the situation, but the situation is far from being, the crisis is
far from being resolved. A very large number of people, Christians largely belonging to
Dalit sections, have been internally displaced, infact the only improper conversion that
seems to be taken place there, is the conversion of ordinary people into refugees ,
internal refugees in Kandhamal district. The Archbishops have spoken out and I think it
is a matter of shame that even today justice has not been done although the situation may
have improved marginally. I appeal to the Chief Minister of Orissa to request the
Central Bureau of Investigation because nobody has faith in your State police after
what happened, they have refused to register the case, the doctors who conducted
the Medical Examination said that the report was ready by October 1 st but they just
failed to pick it up. So nobody has faith in this independence and objectivity of the
police and even if they are honest, for argument’s sake, for your own credibility of
your police, please consider, please handover the investigation and prosecution of
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