It was around midnight on 4th October, 2008, that Munda and Sanathan Badamajhi, and Durjo Sunamajhi, were arrested by dozens of police in their shanty homes in India’s eastern Odisha state.
Ten years on, these three illiterate Christians, from the remote Madaguda area of Kandhamal are yet to return home.
The wives of seven Indian Christians imprisoned for 10 years for a murder many believe they didn’t commit. PICTURE: World Watch Monitor.
Four other Christians – Bhaskar Sunamajhi, Bijay Kumar Sanseth, Buddhadeb Nayak, Gornath Chalenthseth – also arrested by police in December 2008 – continue to languish in jail.
All seven were charged with the August, 2008 murder of Hindu leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati that triggered the worst orchestrated anti-Christian violence in modern India.
Nearly 100 Christians were killed, 300 churches and 6,000 Christian houses plundered and torched, leaving over 56,000 homeless in Kandhamal after a Hindu nationalist group promptly claimed that the murder was a ‘Christian conspiracy’.
The seven were abruptly convicted to life imprisonment in October, 2013, by a third judge after two trial court judges – who had openly indicated during the trial that the accused were innocent – were transferred one after another during the long four years of trial.
However, in June, 2015, two top police officials – who had relied upon the same conspiracy theory to ensure the conviction of the innocent Christians – testified before the Kandhamal judicial inquiry commission that the allegations were false. Despite this, the appeal hearing has been constantly postponed.
“My husband had never gone to that place (the ashram where the Hindu leader was shot dead). He was with us at the time the Swami was killed. How could he be punished for that murder?” Pabitra Sanseth told the media in mid-September, tears pouring down her cheeks.
With three other wives, she had travelled to Bhubaneswar, 380 kms from home, for the dubbing into Odia of a documentary Innocents Imprisoned. It was commissioned by journalist Anto Akkara, who has championed the men’s case for release.
“Since my husband was a firm believer and active Christian leader, they targeted him,” said Pabitra about her husband Bijay – the only one in the group to go to school in childhood.
Jeremiah Sunamajhi, nephew of Durjo, has a witness to his uncle being carried away by the police around midnight. But in fact, when the Swami was killed, Durjo had been out of Kandhamal with Jeremiah to board a train to southern Kerala to seek a job.
“It is a matter of shame and sorrow that the judicial system has let the innocents down,” Jeremiah told WWM. “Even Hindus around us ask why they are still in jail.
“We cannot understand why their appeal (in the Odisha High Court) is dragging on,” lamented Jeremiah who had met the Indian president in 2015 in a delegation seeking the release of all seven men.
“Our lives have been ruined by the illegal arrest and shocking conviction of my father,” Nithaniel Chalenseth, son of Gornat, told WWM October 5 from Kotagarh area of Kandhamal where his father was the Block Panchayath (Area Village Council) president before his arrest.
Nithaniel had to drop out of Engineering studies and seek a job to support his mother and younger siblings. A decade on, Nithaniel is still to settle down with a steady job as he often has to rush home for family concerns.
