Indian Church leaders welcome verdicts on Orissa violence

(Sept 25, 2009) Catholic Church leaders in India have said their faith in the country's judicial system is renewed after life sentences were issued to five people involved in the killing of a protestant pastor last year in Orissa state. Father Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, said the judgment not only "restored our faith in the judicial system" but also brought "hope for the other pending cases" related to last year's violence in Orissa. A fast-track court in Orissa on Wednesday issued five sentences of life imprisonment for the murder of Baptist pastor, Rev. Akbar Digal in Tatamaha village last year in August. The court also fined each a sum of Rs. 5,000. Earlier on Tuesday the special court based in Phulbani, the administrative center of Orissa's Kandhamal district, sentenced six others to three years in prison for an arson attack on a journalist's house in Kandhamal's Phiringia village in December 2007. Police arrested 11 people in that case, but the court acquitted five for lack of evidence. In 2008, predominantly tribal Kandhamal was the centre of weeks of violence, unleashed by Hindu extremists, that left about 90 people dead and 50,000 displaced. Archbishop Raphael Cheenath whose Cuttack- Bhubaneshwar archdiocese includes Khandamal, expressed satisfaction over the verdicts, hoping they will encourage witnesses to come forward and testify to the truth in spite of the threats.