NEW DELHI (CWNews.com)

    Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who is on an official visit to Italy next week, has requested an audience with the Holy Father, according to reliable sources in the Indian Prime Minister's office.

    Church leaders had requested Prime Minister Vajpayee to call on the Pope when a church delegation led by Archbishop Alan Basil de Lastic -- the president of Catholic Bishops Conference of India who died in a car accident in Poland on Tuesday -- met him on June 12. The church leaders called on the Prime Minister to apprise him of the Christian concern over unabated violence on Christian targets allegedly by Hindu extremists following the murder of Catholic missionary who was beaten to death on June 7 in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

    The federal coalition government led by Prime Minister Vajpayee's pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely considered to be closing its eyes if not actually encouraging the organized attacks on church targets. Over 200 incidents of atrocities on Christians have been reported since the BJP assumed power under Vajpayee's leadership in 1998.

    Meanwhile, the autonomous National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has asked the federal government to give a comprehensive report to the Commission on the recent incidents of attacks on Christian targets. The anti-Christian violence, NHRC said in a press release on Thursday, has "created reasonable apprehension in the minds of the Christians throughout the country of their being victimized and their human rights being endangered."

    "The Commission took note of similar apprehensions that have been voiced in the form of editorials, articles, and news items in the media and general feeling that it should take up this matter to ensure the protection of the human rights of the Christian community and their institutions and to prevent any future violations," the NHRC said.

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