Short Memoriale on Fr. A. T THOMAS SJ

Fr Anchanikal T. Thomas, a Jesuit missionary, fought for the poor until his death in the state of Jharkhand, which is now caught between insurgents and landowners. He was martyred in 1997 as he tried to find out about Maoist abuse of locals. Fr M.K. Jose, a fellow Jesuit, said, he “was a victim of Maoist violence. However, his death has enriched the Jesuit mission in Hazaribagh district.”
AT worked among the Dalits in India, the poorest and most oppressed caste in the country, also known as the ‘untouchables’. He took up legal disputes on their behalf, once helping a group of villagers go to court to recover a plot of land that was taken away from them. In 1997, he was in the village of Sirka, where some local insurgents were extorting money from the village chief.
Fr. Thomas’s final moments On the morning of Friday 24 October, with his friend Fr. George, he visited a school they had built in the village of Rajhar. Later Fr.Thomas decided to go alone to Sirka about three kilometers away.
On arriving in Sirka, it is rumoured that he found a group of people dressed in police uniforms beating up one of the villagers. One of the \”police\” shouted, \”This is the man who sent me to jail.\” He was then surrounded and taken away at gunpoint. The villagers protested: \”He’s a good man. Let him go.\” It is alleged that the \”police\” were, in fact, a breakaway group of insurgents who, under the guise of a people’s movement, were extorting money from one of the villagers.
The insurgents recognised AT as an advocate from a previous dispute, and so kidnapped him. No ransom note was received. His decapitated body was found in a riverbed on 27 October 1997.
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