Nun killed in attack on Indian orphanage

According to the Associated Press, a group of Hindu militants gathered at the orphanage and asked nearly 20 residents to leave the complex.

ORISSA, India (Religious Intelligence) - One nun was killed and a priest critically injured in eastern India on Monday after suspected Hindu extremists set a Christian-run orphanage on fire.

The attack took place in Khuntapali in the state of Orissa nearly 250 miles west of the state capital Bhubaneshwar. The incident occurred during a strike called by the World Hindu Council to protest at Saturday's killing of a Hindu religious leader and four others by suspected communist rebels elsewhere in Orissa.

According to the Associated Press, a group of Hindu militants gathered at the orphanage and asked nearly 20 residents to leave the complex.

"Some unidentified attackers first ransacked the orphanage at Phutpali, around 85 kilometres from here, and then set fire to two rooms of the orphanage which led to the woman being burnt to death while the priest sustained serious burns," Deputy Superintendent of Police GC Mohapatra said.

Local TV stations showed an angry mob vandalising a church, throwing away furniture and setting them on fire. Villagers blocked roads with logs and boulders to stop police from entering the trouble spot. "They then set the orphanage on fire with the nun and the priest locked inside," the police officer said. The nun died and the priest was hospitalized with serious burns.

Hundreds of police were deployed in three towns in Orissa's rural Kandhamal district as they tried to end two days of violence in which a Christian orphanage was also torched by suspected Hindu mobs.

India's constitution is secular, but most of its billion-plus citizens are Hindu, 84 per cent. Only 2.5 per cent of Indians of its 1.2 billion people are Christians.

There have been attacks on Christians in Orissa and other parts of India in previous years. In 1999, a Hindu mob killed Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children by burning them in their car in Orissa.

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This article first appeared in the Religious Intelligencer and is used with permission.