Seven Christian nuns injured in attack in Kerala
COCHIN, India (Reuters) - Seven nuns of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity order were injured when a group of unidentified men attacked them and beat them up with sticks in Kerala, police said on Sunday.
A driver and a Christian priest from Kenya were also injured in the attack which took place late on Saturday on the outskirts of Calicut, they said.
“They were distributing food in a slum when they were attacked by a group of men,” H. Venkatesh, police chief of Calicut, told Reuters by phone.
He said no arrests had been made so far. Calicut is about 200 km north of Cochin, Kerala’s commercial hub.
Local TV news channels said the attackers were supporters of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was thrown out of power in national elections in May.
But Venkatesh said police were still investigating the identity of the attackers and he had no information if they were BJP supporters.
Hardline Hindu groups linked to the BJP have in the past attacked Christian missionaries in Kerala, accusing them of converting poor, low caste Hindus by offering financial bait.
Christians account for about two percent of India’s majority Hindu population of more than one billion people.
Mother Theresa, hugely popular in India where she was known as the “saint of the gutters”, founded the Missionaries of Charity global order of nuns in 1950. She died in 1997 and was beatified or declared blessed by the Vatican (news - web sites) last year.
