In a rare show of courage, the Indian Express reports some eyewitnesses accounts to the foul murder of Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati. Reproducing in full in case the Indian Express develops cold feet and withdraws the report, a la Tape Turdesai.
Trauma in ashram, schoolgirls witnessed Swami’s murder
Ravik Bhattacharya
Posted online: Friday, August 29, 2008 at 0127 hrsJelaspota (Orissa), August 28: While violence rages across Kandhamal district, in the ashram, where its spark was lit when Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati and four others were killed on August 24, the adults are angry, the children traumatised.
Many of the 130 girls in the Kanya Ashram, a residential school on the campus, were eyewitnesses to the killing of the VHP leader and that incident has burnt memories they will never forget.
“First, we thought someone is bursting crackers and so we ran towards the main gate. Then we saw and heard people screaming and running. There was blood all over the place. Swamiji and Mataji and others were lying in blood. I shouted and ran away, we all started running here and there,” said 15-year old Anita Pradhan. She is from Raikia and has been in the ashram for three years.
According to Anita, it was around 7 in the evening, prayer time in the students’ quarters. Swamiji and Mataji Bhaktimoyee, head of the girls hostel, were inside Swamiji’s room adjacent to the main entrance.
According to eyewitnesses, 10 to 15 men climbed the wall and started firing indiscriminately. They first shot dead Amritanandji, a disciple of Swamiji. The attackers then entered a small room, home to Prabhati Ganta, the guardian of one of the students who was living there. They shot him, too. Later, Kishore Baba, a resident of Boudh, was shot just outside this room.
It was then that they broke open Saraswati’s room. “Swamiji ran into the toilet to save himself and shut the door. Mataji, who hid behind the door, was shot first. The miscreants then broke open the toilet door and sprayed bullets,” said an eyewitness.
Vijaylaxmi Mullick, a Class X student at the ashram, is too traumatised to narrate the incident. Her voice trembles and falters as she remembers. “I rushed towards the main gate along with others only to see some men running around and loud cracking noise. I heard the cries of Swamiji and others. I saw other Swamijis running here and there. I was scared and ran inside the hostel room with another girl. We sat huddled together. Until after a long time, one of the Swamijis came and escorted us out of the room.”
Kusum Pradhan, a Class 6 student, could not venture out of her hostel room after dark following the incident. “I too rushed out after hearing the noise. I saw bodies lying in blood. I touched Swamiji’s feet, who was lying in the bathroom. It was still warm but he did not move. Nor did Mataji, who lay inside the room,” was all Kusum could say.
The 130 girls, who now reside inside the hostels of the sprawling ashram, now cannot venture out. The ashram is guarded by CRPF and Orissa police constables. The girls’ relatives are unable to visit the ashram and take them home because of the violence and the ongoing curfew in the district.
Brahmachari Shankar Chaitanya, who is now in charge of the ashram and is always escorted by police constables and CRPF personnel, seethes with anger against both Christians and the state government. “We had written 30 times to the state government that Swamiji’s and our lives were at stake, that we were being threatened by Christian leaders. Before the incident, we got a letter threatening to kill Swamiji. We formally complained to the police and district authorities. They sent only four baton-wielding constables,” said Shankar Chaitanya. “Not a single minister visited us after the incident, not even of our BJP. The Collector comes sometimes. He gave us rice, dal and sugar for the children.”
Chaitanya alleged that it was Christians, not Maoists, who were responsible for the incident. “The Maoists can never do this. It is Christians who threaten us everyday and they did this,” he said. He alleged that the ashram has been kept out of the peace process. “No one called us for any meeting or to take part in any peace process. As long as are kept out, the violence will continue.”
Also read why the murder investigators believe that Christian militants (that’s the right word), not Maoists were behind the murder. Some snippets.
Within minutes of the reaching the crime scene, the district authorities made a statement saying it was suspected Maoists who killed the Swami.
“Isn’t it far fetched? District authorities blaming a particular outfit within minutes of arriving at a crime scene?” asked Ashok Sahu, a retired IPS officer, who specialises in left wing extremism. [...] Sahu points out the following: “The five attackers who the locals caught and handed over to the police are not Maoists. They are from the region.
“Moreover, I see no reason why the Maoists will spare the policemen on duty. They would have killed them. Then, there are the leaflets that were thrown around the ashram in a very amateurish way. The Maoists are very organised. If somebody is carrying an AK-47 he must be at least a commander. And if there are four commanders to marshal the mob, there wouldn’t have been indiscriminate firing like what we saw. And last but not the least, I have never heard or seen Maoists wear masks and hoods.
“They see themselves as revolutionaries. They never care about whether they are seen or not. In fact, I would say, they would very much want to be seen,” Sahu said.
Postscript: In what I interpret as a positive sign, most people have simply dismissed the Maoist theory as nonsense ever since they heard the news of the murder.
Tags: Commentary, Indian Politics, Pseudo Secularism Hall of Shame, Society & Culture
@sandeep
The eyewitness report is indeed traumatising. You dont need the VHP to spark off violence, even the most gentlest of Hindus uncompromised yet by pseudosecular ideology will feel incited against these cold blooded murderers
But our secular media remains perversely persistent in defending the missionaries.
http://saurav-basu.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/08/missionaries-and-the-secular-media.htm
>>Lakshmananda Saraswati
“Lakshmananda Saraswati”
Dear Sandeep, I don’t know who first misspelt the name of the Martyred sannyAsI, but the correct spelling should have been Lakshmanananda (as in the sandhi of ‘lakshamana’ and ‘Ananda’). But looks like all the reports and commentaries misspell the name.
In what I interpret as a positive sign, most people have simply dismissed the Maoist theory as nonsense ever since they heard the news of the murder.
Who are “most people”?
From
“The government’s responsibility to bring those responsible to book increases when you take into account the fact that the Swami received an anonymous threat only a week before he was killed. The local SP did not even register a case after the Swami lodged a formal complaint. They have to answer a lot of questions or this issue will snowball into a bigger issue than the December violence,” Das concluded.
and
Within minutes of the reaching the crime scene, the district authorities made a statement saying it was suspected Maoists who killed the Swami.
I suspect… has the local police been infiltrated by militant Christians?
The authorities are obliquely indicating that Naxals are commissioned, funded, and controlled by missionaries and western geopolitical interests. The “Dalitist-Leftist” front of missionaries/Western agencies also came out during California Textbook trial. During the previous round of attacks against Swamiji on christmas day, Ashok Sahu, Former Inspector General of Police specifically referred to the Missionary-Naxal nexus. See the following:
http://indiapost.com/article/perspective/1758/
Missioanries consider orphanages in target cultures to be their own geopolitical turf (important enough to kill over). Orphanage reeducation camps were a key component of missionizing in Native Americas and were supported by the American “secular” government.
Kishkindhaa
Indeed, orphanages along with intercontinental adoption (this is done more with East Asian countries like Korea) are big avenues for converting heathens.
Thanks for you guys for bring the real side of the story. When you open the expressindia website all you see if christians holding peace rally and carrying sign boards for peace. As usual, the incident that sparked deaths of innocent 0Hindus has been buried and the after math of such incidents are behing highlited (as in Godhra). Voilence in any form is to be condemned. But, biased reporting from English media will only infurirate mild-mannered Hindus. From all this, a meaningful dialogue concerning monitoring missionary activities will never come out. As usual, we never go to the source of the problem. We strach the surface, condemn the killers and just move on until another tragedy happens. There is no leadership in this country to go to the bottom of the situation, analyze, make amends and avoid recurrence. We are putting out fires all the time, never once determing cause of the fire. Perhaps, the vested interest do not want to go to the bottom of the situation… It may bring out some inconvenient truths that they would not want to face. Until then, let us brace for another sequence of voilence and another round of Hindu bashing.
Just got this from Shivam Vij (not directly from him, but through his Facebook “promotion”): http://kashmir.wordpress.com/. I was wondering if there is some place where the other spectrum of the “chilling stories” of barbarities are published. I didn’t post it on my blog because my blog is not as vibrant as this one is.
I am not saying such stories are completely fabricated but I think such stories can be extracted from both the sides. I think the other side of the stories should be exposed too. I wonder how many people from alternative voices actually go in the fields to report such stories.
please watch ‘orissa :- christian terrorism on Hindus in india’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7OwEcW-1ZE
>> I suspect… has the local police been infiltrated by militant Christians?
dear secular eminence,
please look up for couple of names - Radhakanta Nayak, IAS, and John Nayak, IPS. In fact, your suspicions are verily true. Thou art in secular heaven. The latter named admits to helping fill up the force with ‘his’ people in his own signed letter.
but it wouldn’t be necessary for them to ‘infiltrate’ like it has not been done already. The entire secular establishment from political parties to governments to academics in eminent universities already belong to them. their services are on offer both to militant christians and muslims, secularism you see. So when a train is burnt in Godhra you will read it merely ‘burnt’, or even the Hindus burnt themselves to death.
Just replace the Name of The Hindu Sanyasi and the other victims with christian names, then the reaction of our spineless journalists would have been completely different. Instead of Maoists, the killers would have been called Hindu Extremists and the Dutts, Sardesais, Setalvads, Sachars and the loyal courtiers of the roayal family would have visited the site along with the cameras.
It is time that hindus unite. Then only there is a hope for India.
And I am a Sikh, I want the hindus of the world to unite and fight back.
Jai Hind!
sandeep avre,
elli escape aagogiddira, blog update maaadilla
Please fund Ekal Vidyalaya
1 village is only $350 per year to save the village from naxals and missionaries
Some of you would enjoy reading this post which examines the socio-cultural context of the clashes in Kandhamal (from a report about 6 months ago):
http://satyameva-jayate.org/2008/03/15/the-other-side-of-kandhamal/
have a look at this (some) gory pictures
http://picasaweb.google.com/visakeobbsr/SwamiLaxmanandaNkaHatyakanda#
And Sandeep I highly recommend you to read this
http://media-sin-indicate.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post.html
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/29/1888792/ORISSA_unknown_facts.pdf
Unfortunately this is in Malayalam, but traces Kandhamal history and violence right from Aug 2007 and exposes the media hypocrisy in India.
It exposes “The Hindu” very well and how falsely everything is blamed on VHP and BJP when they are not even present there.
The root of all this is clash between Pana (Dalits) and Kui (STs). But our christian friends made Panas to convert to christianity and the whole clash which was going for more than years now took communal color.
Its a bit long, find a Mallu friend translate it and read it