Punjab hawala money recovery: Hunger can’t be eradicated by chanting the name of God alone, says Father Anthony

The 46-year-old priest came to Punjab 31 years ago after completing matriculation at his native place. Once in Punjab, he pursued BA, B.Ed. and the education required for becoming a priest, which he eventually became at the age of 28.

After attaining priesthood and serving for eight years in the border districts of Punjab, he started an NGO, Navjeevan Charitable Society, in 2007, primarily for conducting religious seminars and other such programmes, and collecting donations. It was in 2012 that he started Sahodaya, a partnership business firm along with three “like-minded” priests, which deals in book selling, construction, garments and providing security guards.

“Rab-Rab japne se hi bhookh nahi hatai jaati (hunger can’t be eradicated by chanting the name of God alone),” he told The Indian Express on Monday. “A priest cannot feed the poor and the hungry just by praying before God. One needs to work to ameliorate the sufferings of the downtrodden.”

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Defending his business interests, he asked, “Why should I beg from the rich when I can earn by running my own businesses? I can earn money by doing business and help the needy by providing them employment opportunities. Sahodaya provides employment to around 500 people. Navjeevan is providing scholarships to hundreds of students. I am able to do this just because I am into business.”

He added that Sahodaya not only sell books, but also does construction, sells garments and provides transport & security services.

Asked about his claim of selling books worth Rs 40 crore to 45-46 schools, he said, “We provide books to 80,000 to 1 lakh students of ICSE Board and PSEB both directly and indirectly. Directly, we sell books to 45 schools while several distributors also procure books from us and sell it further to several other schools.”

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He added, “Rs 40 crore is annual business of all the entities under Sahodaya, book selling accounts for between Rs 25 to Rs 30 crore and is in fact the most profitable business.” To a specific question about Sahodaya selling books on commission basis, Father Anthony replied, “Because we are big buyers, we get huge discounts from the publishers. We sell it to the distributors after retaining some profit. We are kind of master distributors”.

“The income tax department has checked our previous records as well, wherein they found such huge cash inflows in the past two years around this time,” he said.

The Father Anthony is a priest at Pratapura Church in village by the same name. He stays here on a 9.5-acre property, out of which 8 acre is under agriculture farm.

“There is a dairy farm with 80 buffaloes and a stable of 10 horses as well. We provide employment here too…Providing education and generating employment is my passion, and I will keep growing and diversifying my businesses to help achieve these objectives,” he said.

When asked about his allegation of police misappropriating Rs 6 crore, he said he has got a written statement from his bank, South Indian Bank, that this amount has not been deposited in Sahodaya’s account as he had earlier thought, and the entire amount lying at my residence in several cartons was taken by the police only.

One of the four partners of Sahodaya, Josh P, who is also director in the firm, said that he was not aware about the alleged misappropriation and also cash transactions against selling of books as he was not looking after the firm’s financial books. He, however, added that the cash recovered was not Hawala money.

(JALANDHAR), APRIL 1