Fear is writ large on the face of Father Thomas Chellantharayil, recently returned from Orissa’s Kandhamal district. The 55-year-old Catholic priest from Thekkemala in Kerala's Kottayam district had gone to spread God's word in Orissa nearly four decades ago — this month, he ended up within an inch of being lynched in what is currently a terrifying communal cauldron.

Father Thomas, vice-director of Divya Jyothi Pastoral Centre, under the archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, was mercilessly thrashed, humiliated and nearly set on fire by mobs of Hindu zealots in K Nuagaon in Kandhamal, as several policemen watched impassively. This is Father Thomas’s story.

“There had been some tension in K Nuagaon over cow slaughter. When I heard about the gruesome murder of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati on the night of August 23, I rushed to the local camp office of the Orissa State Armed Police, seeking protection for our house,” he told The Indian Express.

“The officer at the camp was casual. ‘There’s no reason to panic. We are here to take care of you’, he said.”

Reassured, Thomas returned home.

The next morning, a huge commotion drew Thomas out of his home. Outside the locked gate was a large Hindu mob, shaking the gate fiercely, shouting slogans against Christians, and spitting abuses against the priest. Besides Thomas, there was another priest, Father Casian, and a young nun in the house then.

As the mob’s blood-baying reached a crescendo, Thomas, Casian and the nun managed to jump over the back wall of the house. As they fled for their lives into the woods behind the house, they could hear the gate being ripped up. And very soon, thick black smoke was rising from the blazing inferno that their home had become.

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