‘They kicked me in the face. As I lay there bloodied, they collected tyres to burn me’

“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.

As the three missionaries cowered in the forest, Thomas and the nun got separated from Casian. Casian hid among the bushes for three days and nights before finally finding his way home. Thomas and nun stumbled to the home of a Hindu late in the night, who gave them food and shelter.

But the ordeal wasn’t over yet. In fact, it probably hadn’t even begun.

On the next morning, Thomas woke up to the baying of the crowd, this time smashing a small church in the locality. “Soon our shelter became unsafe. The house-owner shifted me to an out-house, while the nun was put up in the house.”

This safety did not last. By noon, the mob had figured out where the missionaries were hiding. They broke into the house, and snatched the nun. They then smashed the door of the outhouse and bodily picked up and threw the priest out on the ground. He was then taken to an open place where a many more people were waiting, armed with axes, spades, crowbars, sickles and iron rods.

A savage beating followed. “They swarmed over me, beating me wherever they could. They tore my shirt. They kept saying, ‘Why did you kill Swamiji? How much did you give the hired killers? Why are you conducting meetings here?’,” Thomas said.

After a while, the venue of the assault changed. Both Thomas and the nun were pushed and jostled to the Gram Vikas building. Here, the nun was molested, many hands ripped away her blouse, and violated her savagely as the mob roared.

“I begged with them to leave her. In reply, they hit me with iron rod. They then poured kerosene over me, and prepared to set me on fire.”

“Just then, some of the attackers suggested I should be burned on the road, where more people could see me die. So they dragged me to the road and forced to kneel as they showered blows and abuses on me for over 10 minutes.”

After a while, the ravaged nun was brought out too. The mob had changed its mind again. They now wanted to burn both captives together, in Nuagaon, half a kilometre away.

“We were nearly naked as we were marched to Nuagaon. The beating and abuses never stopped. Some of them were cursing us in Malayalam, so I think they might have worked in Kerala,” said Thomas.

“In Nuagaon, several armed policemen were standing, their faces deadpan. I pleaded them to help us. They said nothing. And watched as a man pounced on me, thrashing me for having asked for help. Suddenly, someone kicked me square on the face. As I lay on the ground bloodied, I could see a shopkeeper from Nuagaon collecting discarded vehicle tyres and tubes to burn us.”

At the end, however, for some reason, the final step wasn’t taken.

The mob let them be taken to K Nuagaon police outpost, where the missionaries were given first aid. “By late night, a team of policemen led by an officer came and took us to Balliguda,” Thomas said.

“At Balliguda we were provided accommodation at the CRPF camp. The policemen at the camp were helpful. Then we were taken to Balliguda police station, where we were asked if we wanted to lodge FIRs. We lodged three separate FIRs: for the attack on the house, the attack on me, and the assault on the nun. In the evening, we were bundled off to Bhubaneswar, where we reached in the wee hours of August 27.”

Here, Thomas was taken to a local hospital, and later to another one in Mumbai, before being shifted to Kerala for ayurvedic treatment.

He told this paper that he would go back to Kandhamal in Orissa to continue the social service he first began in 1970.