00:00Members of the Christian community are up in arms.
00:03In parts of Kerala, they are protesting the arrest of two Catholic nuns in Chhattisgarh.
00:07The protest in Thrissur was led by Archbishop Mar Andrews Tazhat, who also heads the Catholic
00:11Bishops' Conference of India.
00:13So, what happened?
00:14On July 26, two nuns from Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate, Sister Preeti Mary and Sister
00:19Vandana Francis, were arrested at Durk railway station in Chhattisgarh, along with a tribal
00:24youth, Sukhman Mandavi.
00:25They were reportedly at the station to receive a few women who were coming to work at a local
00:29convent.
00:30But a Bajrang Dal functionary filed a complaint, accusing them of trafficking and forced religious
00:35conversion.
00:36Based on this, the police picked them up.
00:37The three were booked and sent to judicial custody.
00:40The church denied all charges, calling the arrest a gross misuse of the law.
00:57Now here's where it gets murky.
00:58The families of the two tribal women involved told the police in writing that they had willingly
01:03sent their daughters for employment.
01:04Even the district SP Robinson Guria confirmed this.
01:07So why the arrest?
01:08Viral videos show the complainant Jyoti Sharma confronting the nuns aggressively at the station.
01:13Soon after, a political firestorm erupted.
01:15Rahul Gandhi called the arrest persecution of Christians.
01:18Kerala CM Pinaray Vijayan wrote to PM Modi demanding justice.
01:22Congress MPs from Kerala, including Priyanka Gandhi, staged a protest in Parliament.
01:26Both the Congress and the left have accused the BJP of targeting Christians, misusing anti-conversion
01:32laws under pressure from fringe right-wing groups.
01:34But in an interesting twist, even the Kerala BJP distanced itself.
01:37It said the nuns should have been given a fair hearing and that there was no evidence of
01:41trafficking or forced conversion so far.
01:43We have immediately reached out to the Home Minister of Chhattisgarh and to the government
01:49of Chhattisgarh and clarified that these are nuns who are basically accompanying three
01:56adult women.
01:57Meanwhile, the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Desai doubled down claiming the nuns were
02:03offering jobs as a front for religious conversion.
02:05As the case unfolds, one question remains.
02:07Were these Kerala nuns genuinely guilty or were they targets of a larger hate campaign?
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