January 24, 1999|By From Tribune News Services.
NEW DELHI, INDIA — Rampaging Hindus burned to death an Australian missionary and his two sons as they slept in a Jeep in eastern India on Saturday, the first deaths in a recent spate of Hindu-Christian violence.
Graham Stewart Stains, a secretary of the Evangelical Missionary Society, and his sons were attacked by activists from the radical Bajrang Dal, a group affiliated with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, police said.
Stains, 58, who had been working with leprosy victims in India for 34 years, and his sons, Philips, 10, and Timothy, 8, died shortly after midnight Friday when a group of up to 40 people doused their Jeep with kerosene and set it ablaze, said witness Subhankar Ghosh, a botany professor.
Until now, the violence had mostly consisted of clashes in the western state of Gujarat, damaging at least 12 Christian churches and 24 Hindu temples. The unrest began after radical Hindus accused Christian missionaries of converting people to their faith.
Police arrested five members of Bajrang Dal, said Binay Beheera, the provincial police inspector-general, quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI). Police were searching for other activists.
The attack took place outside the village of Manoharpur, 620 miles southeast of New Delhi, near a makeshift church.
Stains' group had been holding a five-day program of Bible reading and prayer in the village, as it has for the last 20 years.
The attackers pelted the Jeep with stones, breaking the windows, and beat up people who tried to help, Ghosh told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Stains was a native of Beaudesert, outside Brisbane, his wife, Gladys, said. They also have a 13-year-old daughter, who was not present at the camp.
"We've not had any problems all these years," she said.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee condemned the incident, calling it ghastly, PTI reported.
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