An explosive placed this Sunday in a mass assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses in India has so far caused three deaths – all of them women – and fifty people injured, several of them extremely seriously. The police have already arrested the person responsible, a former member of this evangelical church, a 57-year-old Indian who goes by the name of Dominic Martin.
Hundreds of members of this church, originally from the United States, were in a convention center, Zamra, on the outskirts of Cochin, the most populated city in the southern state of Kerala. It was the third and last day of prayer for this community when several explosions spread panic in the area.
Hours later, the video of the aforementioned Martin came to light, in which he blamed himself for the attack and, in a message in Hindi – with a strong Malabar accent – accused the church to which he had belonged for sixteen years – and to which had departed – from “anti-national activities”. “I tried to dissuade them and they didn’t listen to me,” he reportedly said.
Kerala is the most literate state with the highest life expectancy in India. Also one of the most peaceful and with the greatest religious diversity, with 55% Hindus, 35% Muslims and about 20% Christians. The latter are in their vast majority Syro-Malabar – present since the first millennium or Catholic (present for more than five hundred years).
In the first hours after the explosion, before the attack was claimed, some Hindu extremists – very active on the networks – rushed to falsely attribute the bomb to jihadism. An inflammatory accusation, in a state with one of the largest and best-established Muslim communities. The same hoax spreaders implied that there were Jews among those present, something that has been proven false. Although Cochin welcomed Jews for centuries – and has a famous synagogue founded by Sephardic Jews who fled from the kingdoms of Spain – this community emigrated to Israel in its entirety after the founding of the Zionist state.
Two of the victims, women in their early fifties, died yesterday, Sunday. While a third victim, a twelve-year-old girl with burns on 90% of her body, died this Monday. The assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses had started on Friday and was due to end yesterday. The multi-purpose convention center is located in Kalamassery, on the outskirts of Cochin, next to a law school and a Japanese educational center.
Although India is a power exporter of spirituality, foreign missionaries have been prohibited from entering India for more than sixty years and the government of Narendra Modi, hostile to religions it considers “non-native” to India, has increased measures against religious conversion, as long as it is not what is called “reconversions” to Hinduism.
Kerala Police Chief Sheik Darvesh Saheb has said that the confessed perpetrator surrendered to the authority, as he had announced in his video posted on Facebook. In this, he accuses his former brothers of the creed of being “anti-national” and disgraces them “for preaching the arrival of the end of the world and that only they are going to be saved.” The individual, 57 years old and with a mustache, had deceived her wife by telling her that she was taking the motorcycle at five in the morning to go see a friend.
(Below, image of the explosion and a boxed frame of the murderer claiming responsibility for the attack)
