FATEHGARH SAHEB: Half dozen biri-smoking goondas scaled the walls of SLManty’s convent at Amloh in this district of Punjab on Jan.21, beat up two nuns with iron bars injuring them brutally and decamped with their belongings.
The incident, second of its kind in two months, comes in the wake of heightened Hindu tempers, has shocked people in Punjab. On December 1 armed intruders broke into St Francis Xavier Church at the same campus, desecrated the church and took away Rs 10,000. After that incident two security men had been passed in the church but recently one of them went on leave.
Father Prem Anand in a Statement Said that the condition of Sister Maria who had suffered head injuries and had been removed to a hospital in Delhi was critical. The other nun, Sister Amy, was too shocked to speak out coherently about the incident.
These Sisters of Chanty are busy constructing a building to house a dispensary. They are doing good work to give relief to the sick and the weak and most poor people in the arcaappreciatc their sense of dedication. But after the incident, no sister is willing to serve at Amloh unless the culprits are apprehended and brought to book.
The Rt Rev Gilbert Rego, the Catholic Bishop of the Chandigarh and Shimla diocese, has condemned the attack as the handiwork of mad men and an apparent attempt at pushing the Christian missionaries out of the area. The Bishop further said that about four months ago some nuns of another Catholic institution in Kanyali in Amritsar district had been molested.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 29, 1993
