Ten persons were detained by police in connection with the violence of the Sacred Heart Church in Chhattisgarh, and security has been stepped up around the damaged church and other nearby Catholic facilities.
“We have provided round-the-clock police protection to the church and a school in its compound," according to Superintendent of Police Sadanand Kumar.
“We have registered four different cases against the violence in the Sacred Heart Church and other institutions in its campus and subsequent violence and arrested ten persons,” he told UCA News.
When hundreds of villagers stormed into the Sacred Heart Church on January 2 armed with wooden sticks and iron rods, there were at least 1,000 students and their instructors inside the Church-run Vishwadeep high school campus. Since then the school has been shuttered, but police have urged the administration to reopen it.
“We have asked the school management to reopen. We have made all security arrangements for the safety of students,” said a police officer.
The diocesan officials in Jagdalpur believe that in addition to the money stolen, the Church and the school lost more than 2 million Indian rupees as a result of the attack.
Violence in the name of purported religious conversion was denounced by Jesuit Father A Santhanam, a practising attorney in the Tamil Nadu High Court, who also urged for peace, stating that "violence is not a solution to any problem."
