Leaders of the Grace Fellowship (Presbyterian) denomination on Tuesday claimed their Sunday prayers at City Palace Hotel in Raipur were disrupted and pastor Jonathan A Singh badly beaten up.“We have been organising prayers here for the last three years. This Sunday, a group of 15 to 20 persons came and started vandalising the hall. They told us that our activities would not be tolerated. They started beating me up,” claimed Pastor Jonathan. The pastor alleged that he was chased to his residence where the attackers asked his landlord to throw him out, adding that he later fled to Roorkee. After consulting other Protestant leaders in Dehradun, the community decided to approach the police. “We went to the Cantonment Police station where we were asked to furnish details about the incident. But later, the police officials refused to register a complaint and asked us to talk to the local legislator, Uttarakhand Assembly Speaker Harbans Kapoor,” said Pastor Jonathan. He alleged that one of the attackers was a relative of Kapoor and some of the others were members of the BJP.Dehradun SSP Amit Kumar Sinha said, “If they were not heard at the police station, they should have approached me. I will look into the matter.”When contacted, Kapoor said he was in Delhi and had “no idea about the incident”. Senior BJP leader Ajay Bhat also denied that paprty workers were involved in the incident. “The BJP believes in peaceful co-existence and does not disturb anybody’s religious practices. The vandals might claim to be from the party but I am sure there was no BJP man involved,” he said. Meanwhile, the Congress has trained its guns on the ruling BJP. “We cannot allow the Gujarat model to be replicated in Uttarakhand. This is the second incident of violence against Christians in a month. On June 2, during a bandh call given by the BJP, Grace Academy had been attacked and a teacher, Benjamin Newton, had been beaten up. Though a case was registered, nothing has come out of it till now,” said senior party leader Suryakant Dhasmana.
