For 21-year-old Pushpalata Digal, a first-year Sociology Master’s student at Phulbani Government College, for her sisters, for her brother and her father John Nayek, a retired Orissa police havildar, life since Monday has been a trauma. Their wait today is for a relief camp.

For, they have visited home after home in their neighbourhood asking for shelter only to be refused because they are Christians.

Their house in the Amlapada area, right next to the District Collectorate, was ransacked and its belongings torched on the morning of August 25 by a procession mourning the death of Swami Lakshamananda Saraswati. The procession was escorted by police who, eyewitnesses said, looked the other way.

Several houses belonging to Christians were ransacked all along the procession route. The victims range from retired police officers to a retired Additional District Magistrate.

A number of orphanages in the town faced a similar fate. In more remote villages, the situation is worse — Christian families, including women and children, are leaving their villages and fleeing to adjacent hills and forests.

“The only clothes my two sisters and I have are what we are wearing,” says Pushpalata, in tears. “There’s nothing else left in or of our house. It was around 8 am on Monday when a procession of Swamiji’s followers was passing by. Suddenly, around 100 men, armed with iron rods and lathis, attacked or house and tried to break in. My brother Moses, my sister Taruni and I stood with our backs to the door but we failed to stop them barge in. We somehow escapes through our back door.”

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