Andhra pastors’ killers are attached to fundamentalist group, claim police

Hyderabad – The prime suspect, Govardhan, who was arrested recently in a surprise police raid in connection with the brutal murders of two pastors in Andhra Pradesh, is attached to a Hindu fundamentalist group, police investigating the matter have claimed.

The murders of pastors K. Isaac Raju and K. Daniel last May had shocked the Christian community that feared that religious fundamentalism was on the rise again.

The mutilated body of Pastor K. Issac Raju was found at Golconda on the outskirts of Hyderabad on June 2. He had been missing from his house in Raidurgam area since May 24. The decomposed body was found dumped in a jute bag near a drainage canal.

Earlier, Pastor K. Daniel, 35, who hail from Neralla, Karimnagar district, was found brutally murdered at Shamshabad, also on the city outskirts on May 20. He had been abducted from his house in Asifnagar a day earlier. Police authorities have revealed that acid was poured on the pastor’s mouth and body by the killers, to make it unidentifiable.

Both the pastors were approached by unidentified people on the pretext of solemnising marriages, Christian Today has confirmed. Both were strangulated with a rope and died due to aphyxiation.

Police sources said that auto–rickshaw driver Govardhan had confessed to the crime after intense interrogation and had accompanied the police to Shamshabad and Golconda to reconstruct the sequence of the crimes.

The police have also arrested Raju Singh, Satyanarayana, Shankar, Narsing and one more person in connection with the crimes. Satyanarayana, an associate of Govardhan, who was picked up from Bhainsa of Adilabad district, reportedly revealed the exact number of persons involved in the two cases and narrated the sequence of events that led to the murders.

According to the police, two more culprits, including Ganesh of Nalgonda, who allegedly helped Govardhan carry out the brutal killings, are still at large.

Police Commissioner V. Dinesh Reddy said two or three other pastors were on the list of the gang and had already received death threats from them. “This gang had even drawn up plans of killing the other pastors,” he said.

According to police statements, all the three are activists of the Hindu Vahini organization, an outfit promoting anti–Christian ideology.

The Hindu Vahini has, however, vehemently denied that it was involved in the murders and accused the police of torturing its activists.

Govardhan, who has owed up to the crime, has also said that he was inspired by the act of Dara Singh who murdered the Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two sons, in Jaunary 1999, by torching them alive in the jeep where they were sleeping.

“By killing the two preachers, we wanted to show the world that whoever tries to convert the Hindus to Christianity will meet the same fate,” said Govardhan, hiding his face from the media. “Dara Singh is our inspiration. His act (of killing) emboldened us.”

Incidentally, murder convict Dara Singh was given a reprieve by the Orissa High Court that, on May 19, commuted his death sentence to one that of life imprisonment.

According to Govardhan, many villagers looked at the Christian missionaries with suspicion and believed that they forcibly “converted” innocent villagers.

In a confessional statement, he said that once Pastor Daniel had even asked him to change his religion.

"[The pastors] were targeting the underprivileged and poor of a particular religion which I felt was not correct," he said. “So I eliminated them.”

According to police records, Goverdhan was working for the religious fundamentalist organisation much before Pastor Daniel ignited his hatred and had past criminal records, including extortion and intimidation. More details were, however, not forthcoming from the police.

Apparently, Govardhan came across Pastor Daniel a year back when the latter was allegedly found distributing pamphlets about conversions. Goverdhan and his associates had, at that time, taken objection to this and had warned Daniel against the campaign.

Two separate incidents – the marriage of a local Hindu woman outside her religion and the religious conversion of a Hindu family at Attapur – both at the instance of Pastor Daniel, had provoked rift between the pastor and Govardhan, prompting the latter to hatch a plot with his associates to kill Pastor Daniel, a police officer associated with the investigation said.