In Bengal? Never imagined: Archbishop - D'Souza helps pacify protesters

TT, March 14: The Archbishop of Calcutta, Thomas D'Souza, visited the Catholic school in Nadia where an elderly nun was brutalised, within hours of the crime today.

"It is a terrible incident," he said. "We are pained. We could not imagine that such an incident could happen in Bengal. It should never happen in a civil society. I have doubts about the mindset of the people who did it."

The 74-year-old nun was allegedly raped inside the Convent of Jesus and Mary High School, which is affiliated to the ICSE board and located at Don Bosco Para in Ranaghat.

Archbishop D'Souza was accompanied by Fathers of several churches in Nadia. He held a meeting with administrative officials in the district and the two Sisters who survived the attack this morning.

Sources present at the meeting said the Archbishop listened to the incident from the Sisters, who also told him about their apprehensions regarding safety in the school. He then visited the chapel on the ground floor of the residential block that had been vandalised.

Apart from talking to school officials, the Archbishop played a pivotal role in convincing the agitators who had blocked the nearby railway line and NH34 to withdraw, something the administration had failed to do for hours.

As news of the robbery and the brutality on the elderly nun spread, thousands of people, including schoolchildren and members of the Christian community, blocked the railway line and the highway. The Nadia superintendent of police, the district magistrate, the sub-divisional officer of Ranaghat and the sub-divisional police officer had requested the protesters to disperse, but they didn't.

On the Archbishop's instructions, Father Sarad, the parish priest of the school's chapel, went to the spot and pacified the agitators.

Several of the agitators were invited to a meeting with the Archbishop on a field adjoining the school. The protesters were asked to speak about their grievances in front of administrative officials and the Archbishop.

Sources said it was only after assurances from the Archbishop that the police would do their best to ensure the security of residents, many of whom are Christians, that the blockade was lifted.

The incident of a nun being brutalised in a Catholic institution has evoked both fury and insecurity among members of the Christian community.

"If they (the attackers) could enter a church without hesitation, what would happen to us? We had long been demanding that our neighbourhood be brought under the jurisdiction of Ranaghat police station instead of Gangnapur because the first one is closer to this place. But the administration had been neglecting our demand," said homemaker Jolly Biswas, who lives with her teenaged son at Don Bosco Para.

Biswas is one of the many women members of the Christian community who live in the area with their children while their husbands work abroad.

While Gangnapur police station is 14km from Don Bosco Para, Ranaghat police station is barely 200 metres away. The Gangnapur police station area was carved out of the Ranaghat police station area a couple of years ago.

Rally

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta will organise a rally in Calcutta on Monday to condemn the brutalisation of the nun. The rally will start at Allen Park at 4.30pm, Father Dominic Gomes, the Vicar General of the archdiocese, said.