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Christian Woman Miscarries after Assault in India

Kunika

Village head and family assault her on expectation she would pray for relative.

A Christian woman in central India suffered a miscarriage this month after tribal relatives who practice traditional religion beat and strangled her, sources said.

Kunika Kashyap was more than six weeks pregnant when she was admitted to Government District Hospital-Maharani in Jagdalpur, Bastar District, Chhattisgarh state in serious condition on Jan. 2. Tribal village headman Ganga Ram Kashyap, his wife and adult daughter had assaulted her that day after the headman began video recording her in hopes that he might catch her praying for a common relative – also a Christian – as evidence of some perceived crime, said her husband, Mandu Ram Kashyap.

The 25-year-old Kunika Kashyap, of Bade Bodal village, had gone to visit her cousin’s sister, a Christian who was ill, about 150 meters from her home. Tribal headman Ganga Ram Kashyap, brother-in-law of the sick woman and a cousin of Kunika Kashyap’s husband, spotted her entering the house.

While Kunika Kashyap was sitting at her bedside, Ganga Ram Kashyap began recording her on his mobile phone, said Salim Hakku, a Christian leader from Jagdalpur.

“He suspected that Kunika might pray with her sick relative and wanted to capture it as proof on his cell phone,” Hakku told Morning Star News.

Kunika Kashyap objected, but Ganga Ram Kashyap refused to stop, she said.

“When he continued filming even after my protests, I swatted his hand away,” Kunika Kashyap told Morning Star News from her hospital bed.

She said Ganga Ram Kashyap immediately began to assault her. His wife and daughter rushed out of their house at the commotion and joined in the attack, Kunika Kashyap said.

“Ganga Ram kicked my belly with his foot, strangled me and hit me violently,” she told Morning Star News. “His wife and daughter joined him in beating me with a thick wooden bamboo, kicked my chest, my stomach, my head and my whole body brutally.”

Kunika Kashyap managed to escape, said her husband.

“It was only God’s doing that enabled her to escape from three people continuously beating her from all sides,” said her husband, who works as a mason and daily wage laborer in Jagdalpur, 16 miles from their village.

Kunika Kashyap was in severe pain when her husband rushed her to the government hospital in Jagdalpur, where treatment began at around 5 p.m., he said.

Medical records state that she was admitted with “neck pain, pain over right leg, pain over temporo-occipital and swelling, abdomen pain and chest pain, contusion over neck region,” and that she was six weeks and six days pregnant.

“The initial ultrasound showed that the fetus was alive,” said her husband, “but by 6:30 in the evening she suffered a miscarriage.”

The couple has been married for two years, and this was her first pregnancy, he said.

Discharged from the hospital on Jan. 6, Kunika Kashyap was still undergoing treatment at this writing.

Husband Mandu Ram Kashyap, who along with church elders approached the local police station and filed a written complaint against Ganga Ram Kashyap on Jan. 2, said he suspects officers have not registered a First Information Report (FIR), as he has received no copy of one.

“Though the police said that they would register an FIR after initial investigation, the police never called us for any inquiry, nor recorded my wife’s statement,” Mandu Ram Kashyap said.

The police visited him and his wife only once, on Jan. 7, and asked them about the precise area of the house where the assault had taken place, which they showed them, he said.

Mandu Ram Kashyap and his wife are one of 50 Christian families in the village of about 120 families. Children of Christian parents, each has been Christian for more than 20 years and attend the Episcopal Methodist Church.

Source: morningstarnews.org

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