Mamata Banerjee accuses BJP of targeting Missionaries of Charity

Her accusation followed the arrests of a sister of the order and a woman staffer of 'Nirmal Hriday', a shelter home run by it, in Ranchi last week for allegedly selling a child born to a minor inmate.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee (File | PTI)

KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that the BJP was deliberately targeting the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) after two staffers were arrested on the charge of child trafficking.
“Mother Teresa herself set up Missionaries of Charity. Now, they (MoC sisters) are also not being spared.

Malicious attempts to malign their name. The Sisters are being targeted. #BJP want to spare no one. Highly condemnable. Let MOC continue to do their work for the poorest of the poor (sic),” Banerjee tweeted.

The Chief Minister was present at the Vatican during the canonisation of Mother Teresa in September 2016.

Kolkata has a special connect with Mother Teresa who founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to help the poor.

It was in this eastern city where the Mother spent her life in the service of the down-trodden and the unwanted. After death, she was laid to rest at the international headquarters of the Catholic mission.

The MoC has about 19 homes in Kolkata alone which include homes for the women, for the orphaned children, and for the dying; an AIDS nursing home, a school for street children, and a leper colony for the people suffering from leprosy

Earlier in the day, Ranchi Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas said he would move the court claiming that the police had extracted ‘forced confessions’ from the two sisters of Nirmal Hriday.

The Jharkhand Police has claimed there were at least four cases in which babies were sold for `1.2 lakh each, a charge that has drawn criticism from the church and clergy.