India: Kill A Pastor For $250

Money, food and alcohol are being offered by Hindu extremist groups to people willing to murder Christians and destroy their homes.
This violence is not new to Orissa, India where India’s Communist Party estimates that more than 500 Christians have been killed by Hindu mobs since August.  This figure is twelve times greater than official government claims of only 40 homicides.
The stakes are higher now and pastors have a bounty on their heads.  Chairman of Good News India, Faiz Rahman said Hindu militants are targeting Christian leaders according to the Christian Post.  “The going price to kill a pastor is $250,” he said.



Rahman told the UK based Release International, “All of the pastors are high value targets.”  “We’ve got to get them out of the refugee camps.”

According to Rahman 250 Christian leaders are still in shelters and he alone has helped over 25 pastors to leave refugee camps.  Rahman is the head of several orphanages in Orissa State.
“People are being offered rewards to kill, and to destroy churches and Christian properties.  They are being offered foreign liquor, chicken, mutton and weapons.  They are given petrol and kerosene,” according to an All-India Christian Council spokesman.
On August 24 one official said he personally authorized “cremation of more than 200 bodies” found in jungles after Christians were blamed for the death of Hindu leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati.  The persecution continues after Maoists openly admitted to murdering Saraswati.
Mission Network News estimated 5,000 Christian homes have burned and 200 churches ruined and 50,000 Christians have been forced to flee the violence.  Around 30,000 people remain in government operated refugee camps and tens of thousands are living in forests with several seriously wounded according to the Christian Post.



Christians remain in hiding said Father Manoj whose office is at the archbishop’s in Bhubaneshwar.  “They are to scared to go home.  They know that if they return to their villages they will be forced to convert to Hinduism.”  Barnabus Fund religious rights group told the group Hindu militants “forced” Christians in Orissa to “convert” to Hinduism by threatening them with rape if they refused.
Neighbors reportedly gang-raped a Hindu woman after her Christian uncle refused to renounce his faith, according to reports.
Gang-raped was reported by neighbors of a Hindu woman after her Christian uncle refused to renounce his faith.  Jaspina, a Christian woman was told by neighbors, “If you go on being Christian, we will burn your house and your children in front of you.”  She and her family were forced to eat cow excrement to “purify” them selves of Christianity.  It was reported that other Christians were doused with gasoline and were told to take part in conversion ceremonies or be lit on fire.
The deadline according to Hindu extremists has been set for the capture of Saraswati’s murderers.  The killers must be caught by December 15 or a promise of a massacre will begin on Christmas day, December 25th.
Orissa’s Catholic bishops wrote an ominous letter to the state’s chief minister according to the latest report.  “This conflict is a calculated and pre-planned master plan to wipe out Christianity from Kandhamal in order to realize the hidden agenda of establishing a Hindu nation.”