Police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa have begun a manhunt for a Hindu militant suspected of killing a respected Australian missionary and his two sons after the jeep in which they were sleeping was set alight.
The police, who have already arrested 49 other suspects, announced a reward of 25,000 rupees (£357) for the arrest of Mr Dara Singh, who allegedly led the mob that burned to death Mr Graham Stewart Staines (58) and his sons, Timothy (6) and Philip (9), late last Friday night. They were asleep in their jeep at a makeshift church in Manoharpur village around 150 miles north of the state capital, Bhubaneswar.
Police said Mr Staines's jeep was doused with petrol and set alight, after which the attackers formed a ring around the burning vehicle and prevented villagers from rescuing the victims.
Officials said Mr Singh was a member of the militant Bajrang Dal group which is closely linked to the Hindu nationalist BJP party of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, that leads the federal coalition government.
It is also one of a handful of Hindu militant organisations responsible for over 100 attacks on Christians and their institutions across India after the BJP-led government took office last March.
Mrs Gladys Staines, wife of the murdered missionary, said the local unit of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or National Volunteer Corps - India's most powerful Hindu revivalist organisation - was responsible for the death of her husband.
The RSS is the BJP's spiritual head and has provided its top leadership including the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, Mr Lal Kishen Advani. Formed in 1925 as "religious" troops for the Hindu community to protect it from being "sullied" by outside influences like Islam and Christianity, the RSS daily imparts basic military training drill to its cadres and holds ideological discussions in "shakhas" or camps in thousands of neighbourhoods across the country. Mahatma Gandhi's assassins were products of such a school and shot him dead because of his policy of appeasement to India's minority Muslim community.
And though Muslims remain the RSS's prime target, they began attacking Christians and their institutions last July, accusing them of forcible conversions. Two months later armed Hindu activists caned and gang-raped nuns in a churchrun kindergarten in Madhya Pradesh state in central India. Despite eyewitness identifications of those involved, the police made no arrests.
Some local Hindu leaders even defended the incident on the grounds that the missionaries had to be punished and chastised for conversion drives. India has 17 million Christians who run many schools, hospitals and charitable institutions.
"Hindu fundamentalists view the secularity of the church as a threat to their aim of bringing about Hindu hegemony," said a senior Christian leader, declining to be named.
