A nun celebrated her first vows and was arrested due to anti-conversion laws

Returning to her hometown for the first time, Sister Bibha Kerketta, of the Daughters of St. Anne of Ranchi, had organized a mass at her home for friends and family. Hindu radicals accused her of discrediting other religions. She is in a cell with her mother and three other detainees.

Jashpur ( / Agencies) – A young Indian nun who was celebrating her first religious profession, which took place six months ago in Ranchi, was arrested along with her mother and three other people in Balachhapar, a town in the Jashpur district, in the state Chhatisgarh Indian. The complaint, filed by Hindu nationalist groups in the area, claims that they carried out a healing and conversion session, discrediting other religions.

In reality, according to reports from local Christian groups to the Indian Catholic agency MattersIndiaSister Bibha Kerketta, sister of the Daughters of Saint Anne – an Indian congregation founded in 1897 by Sister Mary Bernadette Prasad Kispotta, the first servant of God of tribal origin in India -, on her first visit to the town had simply wanted to organize a mass Thanksgiving for your first vows, inviting Catholic family, friends and neighbors.

On the night of June 6, radical Hindu groups broke into the house in the middle of mass. He Dainik Jagran, a widely circulated Hindu newspaper in North India, reported that “healing session and religious conversion” had created riots in Jashpur. Upon learning of the tension, a police team took the two groups to the police station for questioning and later arrested Sister Kerketta, her mother and three other people under various articles of the anti-conversion law in force in the state. The nun and the other people are in a Jashpur jail.

In the photo: a celebration of the first vows of some nuns of the Daughters of Santa Ana in Ranchi.