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Bengal missionary school gets 4 threat letters, security tightened

by India Blooms News Service 25 Mar 2015, 10:45 am

Kolkata, Mar 25 (IBNS): After a spate of attacks on churches across India recently, a missionary school in north Bengal has received four handwritten letters in Hindi with a threat message of being set on fire along with a nearby church if the nuns who run it did not leave immediately.

Following the threat letters, security has been stepped up at St Capitanio Girl's Higher Secondary School, about 70 km from Jalpaiguri town in West Bengal, with policemen  on a round-the-clock vigil.
 
The headmistress of the school, who is also a nun, filed a police complaint on Sunday after the threat letters were found near the girls' hostel.
 
The first of these threat letters were received on Mar 11, three days before the attack on the Ranaghat convent school, where an elderly nun was gang raped.
 
Initially, they were seen as a prank but after the Ranaghat incident, the police reportedly began to look at them seriously.
 
Senior officers visited the school on Tuesday to review security condition.
 
The school is over 50 years old and has around 1,700 students, with almost 200 in the hostel. There is a missionary-run boys' school nearby as well.
 
Recently, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said he will do anything to protect the minorities.
 
He had said that the patriotism of the minorities cannot be questioned and there is no reason for any religion to prove its supremacy over the other religions.
 
He had also raised the issue of conversion and the need for an anti-conversion law in the country.
 
" Is conversion necessary? Can social service not be performed without resorting to conversion? Can no religion prosper without encouraging conversion?  Will any country allow changes in its demographic character? Is it not true that the minorities demand anti-conversion law all over the world but not in India?" Singh had asked.