NEW DELHI (MattersIndia): The demolition of a church in south Delhi, India, has upset Syro-Malabar Catholics living in the national capital.
Father Jose Kannukuzhi, parish priest of Little Flower Church in Lado Sarai, said that on the morning of July 12, officials of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation came with three bulldozers and some 150 police personnel.
“They told me they would only demolish a hall adjacent to the church building. So I did not remove the sacred things from the church building,” the priest said.
As the news of the demolition spread through social media, parishioners came to the demolished church to protest. People from other parishes also gathered at the compound and joined a Mass and a candlelight protest late in the evening.
Monsignor Joseph Odanat, vicar general of of the Diocese of Faridabad, said the demolition was a “calculated hidden agenda of the local administration and the land mafia to evacuate us from there.”
He claimed the diocese had obtained a stay order in 2015. “We will go ahead with legal actions,” Monsignor Odanat said. The land was donated to the diocese 12 years ago for the religious needs of some 1,500 local Catholics.
Archbishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara of Faridabad expressed sadness and shock over the incident, saying, ‘The authorities have razed a religious place and hurt the sentiments of the people’
Archbishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara of Faridabad expressed sadness and shock over the incident, saying, “The authorities have razed a religious place and hurt the sentiments of the people.”
Monsignor Odanat said the municipal administration had cited the reason for demolition as “encroachment of government’s agricultural land.”
The vicar general explained, “We had approached the officials several times for the conversion of land for religious use but the land mafia is so strong that we could not get it done.”
In a statement, the district administration said the church was built on the gram sabha [village council] land, which was “encroached by some people by installment of religious structures.”
It said, “Over time the encroached area started increasing in the garb of the expansion of the religious structure. Therefore, the Block Development Office tried to undertake the demolition of the unauthorised structures.” It added that the matter was transferred to the “religious committee” at the direction of the National Human Rights Commission.
The statement said the administration received a letter from the Home Police Department on March 3 directing them to demolish “the entire construction above the ground floor as well as portions of the ground where idols are not installed/placed without waiting for the decision of the Religious Committee.”
According to a notice dated July 7, the Block Development Officer (South) directed the “encroachers/unauthorised occupants” to remove the encroachment within three days.
However, pastoral council member and lawyer, John Thomas, said, no notice was received “nor were we given time to vacate the land. We were not even allowed to retrieve our sacred things.”
He called the demolition “a completely illegal and illicit act,” adding, “We will take legal action against this.”
