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Police are smothering Allahabad probe

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

The Uttar Pradesh police are trying to kill the Allahabad attack on Christian missionaries.

Yes, we know it is a serious allegation. But facts leave us no option but make it. For starters, let us study Allahabad Senior Superintendent of Police P K Tiwari's reaction to the incident.

In a word, it is disbelief.

His responses are loaded with insinuations about the veracity of the complaint. "Why did it take 24 hours for the five missionaries to report the assault?" he asks.

The answer to that is already with the police. The missionaries, belonging to the Kerala-based organisation Hope in Jesus, have clearly stated on record injuries and shock delayed their approaching the police.

But Tiwari isn't believing.

The fact that the missionaries, who were distributing pamphlets carrying the 'message of Jesus' during the Magh Mela(popular Hindu bathing festival on the banks of Ganga), were dragged inside the Bajrang Dal enclosure to be beaten up with lathis and sticks, and kicked around strongly indicates that the assailants were saffron. Eyewitnesses say they shouted 'Mulayam Singh Yadav zindabad'- but that seems more a feeble attempt to dodge blame than anything else. In any case, would anyone else try strong-arm tactics inside a Bajrang Dal camp but their own workers?

But Tiwari still isn't believing.

This scepticism is explainable if you consider the police may have skins to save in the saffron bandwagon. And they seem to have done a decent job of it, using the missionaries' failure to point out anyone during an identification parade, which, incidentally, was conducted inside the Bajrang Dal camp.

"In the first place they file the FIR after a good 24 hours, then they can't even identify the assailants," huffs Tiwari, "So how can they arrive at the conclusion that they were assaulted by the Bajrang Dal?"

Fair question, that. But easily answerable with another: If not the Bajrang Dal, who assaulted them? And that, too, inside the saffron enclosure?

Tiwari, of course, has no answer. But plenty more questions.

"How could it be possible for the incident to go unnoticed by the police on a day when at least 700,000 to 800,000 people had converged?" he asks, adding that there was heavy police presence all around and if the missionaries were dragged around, it would surely have attracted attention.

The police also claim that the missionaries -- Vijay Kumar, Anil Kumar, Laloo and Asokan (the fifth, Rajendran, escaped) -- gave varying versions during the investigation. One of the victims, still bandaged, responds:

"If the same questions are repeated by different sets of cops over a period of time, there is bound to be a little difference in the use of words. Why should this be construed as different versions?"

The victims say they were kept in confinement for nearly two-and-a-half hours before being left outside the enclosure. "Somehow we managed to crawl and reach a rickshaw that took us to our parsonage at Naini (on the outskirts of the city)," they say.

After first aid at the mission, they were taken to the district hospital. They were discharged the next morning, following which they approached the police.

But the police don't believe it.

"Why did they not in the first place walk across to the nearest police station that was barely 50 metres away from the enclosure?" Tiwari asks again, "If they were scared of going to the nearest police station, there were 10 other outposts in the area itself. They could have gone to any of those."

Sure, they could have, the missionaries agree - if they weren't frightened out of their wits. If they could think coherently.

Another point that the police seem eager to highlight is that Vijay Kumar is a recent convert. He is stated to have told the police that he adopted Christianity after he got cured of a serious stomach ailment by praying to Jesus on the advice of a priest.

The police, thus, are busy investigating the 'other angle'. Namely, how many Hindus have been converted by the Hope in Jesus, which has been working in Allahabad for several years.

A look in that direction paints a white picture of the missionaries. It would seem they have been doing "selfless service", particularly in dalit localities. They do distribute pamphlets published by the Bible Society of India, but they don't seem to have indulged in forcible conversions.

Meanwhile, the incident has sparked off much tension in the city, where Christian missionaries have deep roots and have been running educational institutions and hospitals for decades. "We have made special security arrangements at all such places," reveals District Magistrate Alok Tandon.

While the United Christian Federation of Uttar Pradesh has urged state Governor Suraj Bhan to ban all Hindu fundamentalist bodies, the local unit of the Bajrang Dal has taken serious affront to the accusations. Terming it as an 'orchestrated campaign and conspiracy to defame the Sangh Parivar', VHP's regional organising secretary Keshav Prasad has demanded action against the police officer who went to the enclosure to investigate.

"The police should not have entered the Bajrang Dal premises without ascertaining facts," he complaints, seemingly oblivious to the logic that it was to ascertain the facts that the police came over.

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