Suspected Hindu radicals in India ransacked three churches near the city of Bangalore yesterday despite a crackdown after anti-Christian attacks in the region, reports said.
The Press Trust of India news agency said the vandalized churches were on the outskirts of Bangalore, the capital of southern Karnataka state, which is ruled by the Hindu nationalist BJP party.
Television channels showed police firing tear gas outside the damaged churches and charging attackers with canes and rifles. Officers said the vandals belonged to the rightwing Bajrang Dal Hindu group.
On Saturday police arrested Mahendra Kumar, head of the Dal’s branch in Karnataka, and charged him with inciting sectarian attacks, which began a week ago.
Almost two dozen churches in Karnataka have been attacked, following similar clashes in the eastern state of Orissa which left nearly 20 dead.
The Orissa violence, triggered by the murder of a Hindu priest and four followers, forced thousands of people, mostly Christians, to flee their homes. Many are still living in state-run camps.
Hindu-Christian violence occurs periodically in India, where 2.3 percent of the country’s population of more than 1.1 billion are Christians.
Hardline Hindus accuse missionaries of bribing poor tribal people and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity by offering free education and health care.
Meanwhile, Indian police yesterday said they had arrested three more suspected militants over a series of bombings across the country that have left more than 140 people dead.
The police said the three men belonged to the Indian Mujahideen, the group that has claimed responsibility for serial blasts in several cities including attacks in New Delhi on Sept. 13.
Two of the three men were among those who had planted bombs in the Indian capital, killing 22 people and injuring about 100, police said. Five bombs exploded while three were defused.
The latest arrests take to five the number of suspects held since Friday’s gun battle in a Muslim-dominated district of New Delhi, in which two suspects were shot dead.
Two men escaped and one police officer was killed in the raid.
“These three men belong to the same module that we busted following Friday’s shootout in which two Indian Mujahideen men were shot dead,” police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said.
The Indian Mujahideen first came to public attention last November following serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh in which at least 13 people died.
The outfit said it was also responsible for a string of five bomb blasts in July in the western city of Ahmedabad that killed 45 people.
The group sent an e-mail to media outlets after blasts in May in the tourist city of Jaipur that left 63 dead in which it announced it had launched an “open war” against India for supporting the US.
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