(July 17, 2010) A Dutch Catholic missionary in Jammu and Kashmir is appealing an
expulsion order requiring him to leave India by the end of July, saying the order
is the result of a mishandled police investigation. Mill Hill missionary Father Jim
Borst and Catholic Church representatives have approached state and federal officials
to revoke the order. They expect “a positive result soon,” said Bishop Peter Celestine
Elampassery of Jammu-Srinagar. Father Borst wrote to federal minister Farooq Abdullah,
a native of the state and its former chief minister, asking him to help expunge the
state’s Foreigners Registration Office order. It was issued on June 26 by an officer
“who is consciously and deliberately making sure I will have to leave the country,”
Father Borst said in the letter. Media reports said the priest was asked to leave
because of his attempt to convert people in India’s only Muslim majority state. The
priest said he used to visit a Muslim intellectual, who an official has accused of
converting to Christianity. “The local mosque is even refusing to accept him but
he is Muslim and has never been a Christian.” Father Borst, who has served in the
state since 1963, said the official who issued the order has not approached him for
any information and has also refused to speak to him. He said that the State Chief
Minister Omar Abdullah may have sanctioned the order “reluctantly, under pressure
from his very busy schedule.”