Ajay Kumar Singh*

Acquittal in the first instance of a BJP politician charged with the anti-Christian violence of August 2008. It raises fresh controversy over the impunity of the perpetrators of the pogroms and the insecurity in which many Christians still live. The story of the Catholic community of Betticola traces the struggles of 45 families that still live as refugees in their homeland.

Abhimanyu Nayak, 44, was a Christian man from the village of Barapalli in Kandhamal district. On 27 August he was hanged and burnt alive by a mob of Hindu extremists. His story can now be told along with that of other Christians who also experienced the pogrom that racked Orissa.