India’s federal government has sought dismissal of a petition that sought to end the persecution of Christians, saying there could be a “hidden oblique agenda” behind it [1].
The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore, the National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India, said that an average of 45 to 50 violent attacks against Christian institutions and priests were reported every month.
A record 57 attacks were recorded in May, the petition said and sought urgent intervention from the top court.
However, in its affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court, the government said there seemed to be an agenda behind filing “such deceptive petitions.”
The government alleged that such petitions were meant to “create unrest throughout the country and perhaps for getting assistance from outside the country to meddle with internal affairs of our nation.”
Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the federal government, told the court that such “half-baked and self-serving facts and self-serving articles and reports culminating into a petition — based upon mere conjectures — clearly appear to be for an oblique purpose.”
Describing the petition as a “hazardous trend,” the government denied any kind of targeted attacks against Christians.