Nuns forced off the train: The Police Superintendent of the Government Railroad Police (GRP) launched a “detailed investigation” on Thursday into the incident in which four Christian women, including two nuns, were allegedly verbally harassed and forced to get off a train in Jhansi by GRP staff and some fellow travelers, identified as ABVP workers.
The members of the ABVP allegedly had falsely accused the women of participating in forced religious conversion.
The incident, which occurred at Jhansi station on March 19, was brought to light in a video showing the women being booed, sparking a wave of outrage in Kerala, where the nuns are from, and a guarantee from the Union Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah.
IG (Railways) Satyendra Kumar Singh said SP (Lucknow) from GRP, which is in charge of Jhansi, was asked to visit the site for a detailed investigation. “He is in Jhansi and we expect to receive a report from him with the findings in a couple of days,” said IG Singh. When asked if he had received a complaint from the woman, he said: “I have not received any complaint.”
RPF (Jhansi) station officer Sunil Kumar Singh also said: “We have not received any complaints and no FIRs have been filed.”
Anchal Arjariya, the VHP leader in Jhansi whose name is listed in the police station diary entry as the person who alerted authorities to the suspected “conversion” of Christian nuns, told The Indian Express on Thursday that The problem is getting worse due to the Assembly Polls in Kerala, which has a substantial Christian population. “We did nothing wrong. It is our duty to inform the police. If we suspect terrorists, or that there is a bomb, who would we inform, if not the police, ”he asked.
In the GRP general journal entry, Jhansi, Arjariya’s name appears as the person who called Inspector Suneel Kumar Singh, who investigated and also wrote the entry the next day about the four Christian women, including two nuns, who were traveling in Utkar Express.
Arjariya describes himself on social media as a social and spiritual activist, vibhag pramukh, VHP, maha-mantri district, Hindu Jagran Manch, member of Gau Sanrakshan Samiti, Jhansi, and member of the Red Cross.
Inspector Sunil Singh said that the train’s stopping time was too short and that there was no scope to verify the complaint without removing the women from the train: Utkar Express stops in Jhansi for about 10 minutes.
“Nor could we have stopped the train; it takes time to reach a conclusion while the allegations are investigated, ”he said. The station entrance lists this as a matter of alleged human trafficking.
Singh said it would not have been appropriate for the police to leave the women at the mercy of a mob, a request, sources said, which will likely figure in the ongoing internal investigation.
Stating that the police did their duty “100%”, Singh said: “The police do not leave anyone at the mercy of a mob … We did not show any disrespect to women. When it was discovered that the matter was false, we respectfully let them go. ”
While the main whistleblower, ABVP co-pilot Ajay Shankar Tiwari, wrote in his complaint that he was in fact traveling in the next car for the four women, he also wrote that he informed Arjariya by phone from the train. Arjariya said that after the matter was found to be unfounded, he “scolded” Tiwari.
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