Seven Kandhamal Christians languishing in jail for alleged murder, part 2
Anto Akkara, a rights advocate and journalist with international media, has made numerous visits to Kandhamal district of eastern India’s Odisha state to find out first-hand about the serious human rights violation and atrocities committed against Christians there. Violence against Christians erupted with untold savagery in Kandhamal, with Hindu extremists blaming the August 23, 2008 assassination of Hindu leader Swami Lakshmanananda on Christians, despite Maoist rebels claiming the murder. Seven Christian men, falsely implicated in the murder, have been languishing in jail for over 7 years. Akkara, who has written several books unmasking the injustice to the Christians of Kandhamal, organized an event on March 3rd at New Delhi’s Constitutional Club, in which the wives of the seven men appealed for justice for their husbands. His upcoming book, “Cry of the Oppressed,” provides facts, concrete evidence and conspiracies to prove that the seven men were falsely implicated. To know about his latest efforts on behalf of these innocent people, we called Akkara on his mobile phone in Bangalore.
In the first part this interview last week, Akkara lamented that the world seems to have forgotten the Christians of Kandhamal, with justice and compensation denied to them for the mere fact they are Christians. Talking about the travesty of justice, he said that a renowned and honest judge who was about to acquit the 7 innocent men, was suddenly transferred, and his replacement convicted them all on trumped up charges without any shred of evidence. Akkara said the police found a broken barrel of an old unused hunting gun with the accused as evidence of murder, which became two firearms with the prosecutor and on conviction became 3 firearms. So Akkara went public and organized the event on March 3 at New Delhi’s Constitutional Club, where he invited several leading personalities of India, notably Kuldip Nayar, the 93-year old patriarch of Indian journalism. But Akkara lamented that minutes before the start of the event, several news channels and media suddenly disappeared, for reasons best known to them. However, Akkara hasn’t given up. At the New Delhi event, he launched a website with an online signature campaign at www.release7innocents.com, advocating for the cause of the 7 innocent men with the Chief Justice of India, the President of India and the National Human Rights Commission.
Today, Akkara begins the final part of this interview explaining how difficult it is for poor and illiterate people of India to obtain justice.
Listen:
| All the contents on this site are copyrighted ©. |