Under pressure from an official in the ruling Hindu nationalist political party, police in Uttar Pradesh state released a suspect without charges over the attempted killing of a pastor in May.
‘When we entered the police station for the identification process, the attacker was treated like a VIP, not as a criminal,’ said Deepak Kumar, the brother-in-law of the pastor. ‘He was released the same day, even after we insisted that he is the one.’
Four men ambushed 39-year-old pastor Dinesh Kumar as he left Mohiuddinpur village on his motorbike, beating him with clubs so severely that he lost consciousness. A deep wound to his head required 16 stitches, a cut on his arm seven stitches, and he sustained internal injuries; seeing the wound on his arm, a doctor asked his wife if he had been shot.
‘They had no intention to threaten me. They attacked to kill me,’ Pastor Kumar said.
When visited in hospital by the police, the pastor had at first not been able to give them any information on the attackers. But Kumar recalled having seen the man observing him as he stood outside his house praying for a sick member of the church and reading the Bible.
