Police Back Off Statement of Religious Motive in Murder of Christian in India

Investigator also denies tribal ritual took place before slaying; a more senior officer says it did.

School in Tripura state in northeastern India. (Wikipedia photo)

School in Tripura state in northeastern India. (Wikipedia photo)

NEW DELHI (Morning Star News) – Police in India’s remote Tripura state are backing away from earlier statements that the Christian faith of a convert from Hinduism was a factor in his murder.

Days after the beheaded body of 35-year-old Tapas Bin was found in a stream in the Teliamura area of West Tripura District on May 25, police told Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) that his father-in-law and a tribal sorcerer had killed him for refusing to leave Christianity. Bin’s father-in-law, Gobinda Jamatia, is part of an ethnic group that worships Hindu deities while retaining tribal rites and rituals.

Jamatia’s daughter, Jentuly, had married Bin after converting to Christianity while Bin was tutoring her academically. She told police that her father opposed their marriage, had been pressuring Bin to convert back to Hinduism, and that because of her own faith he might also try to kill her and her 1-year-old son, according to IANS.

The Investigation Officer (IO) of the case, however, told Morning Star News that the low economic status of Bin, a private tutor from Bihar state who was not of the same ethnicity, was the motive.

“Nothing in our investigation thus far suggests that he was killed because he was a Christian,” Ashish Sarkar said by phone from Tripura, one of three small states of India east of Bangladesh.

Jamatia is a well-off employee of the state government, while Bin was from a poor family, Sarkar said.

Local police official Chandan Saha had told IANS that preliminary investigations showed Jamatia and the sorcerer killed Bin after the Christian refused to reconvert to Hinduism. Saha could not be reached due to telephone connectivity problems in the region.

Police had also told IANS that Bin’s father-in-law and the sorcerer, Krishnapada Jamatia (not related), conducted a ritual before killing the Christian. But Sarkar, the IO, told Morning Star News that the investigation did not indicate a ritual took place before the killing.

“The main accused, Gobinda Jamatia, had engaged the sorcerer ever since his daughter married Bin,” the IO said. “But the sorcerer could not help through witchcraft.”

The IO may be under pressure from tribal religious leaders to deny the religious dimension among other motives for the slaying, as a more senior officer from the Teliamura police station admitted to Morning Star News that a tribal ritual did take place before the murder.

Teliamura Police Inspector Pranab Sen Gupta, who is assisting the IO in the case, said that Krishnapada Jamatia and Bin’s father-in-law had conducted the prayer ritual, possibly suggesting a religious motive in the killing. The sorcerer is in custody and has reportedly confessed to the murder, while Bin’s father-in-law has absconded.

Sarkar acknowledged that before they married about three years ago, Bin was tutoring Jentuly and that she subsequently became a Christian, the only one in her family.

“However, religion is not an issue in this state,” he added.

The IO seemed to be hinting that anti-Christian violence in India is attributable mostly to the divisive politics of Hindu nationalist groups, strongly opposed by Communist-led Tripura state. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI-M, has been governing Tripura since 1993.

Sarkar acknowledged that the sorcerer, arrested on May 29, aided in the slaying.

“Gobinda Jamatia sought the help of his friend, Krishnapada Jamatia, and promised to give him a lot of money in return,” Sarkar said. “But Gobinda absconded without paying anything to the sorcerer.”

Sarkar added that the wife of the slain Christian was not under any threat.

Aashima Samuel of the Delhi-based Evangelical Fellowship of India, which has local offices in India’s northeastern states, told Morning Star News that it is possible that the economic status and the ethnicity of the murdered Christian could have been factors in the killing. The accused are Jamatia, the fourth largest tribal or aboriginal group of Tripura, while Bin was a migrant from the eastern state of Bihar, he said. Samuel added that it appears to be a complex case.

Sorcery is prevalent in Tripura, state Chief Minister Manik Sarkar admitted last month.

Jamatias are protective of their culture and view Christian conversions as an attempt to destroy their distinctive identity. There have been tensions between Jamatias and a separatist, outlawed militant organization, the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), allegedly supported and led by Christians. Segments of the Jamatia population believe NLFT is imposing Christianity on them.

Mainline churches deny supporting the NLFT. Christians make up 3.2 percent of the state’s 372,451 people, according to Operation World; the state’s population is 85.6 percent Hindu, including tribal animists.

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