Hindu nationalist groups had shared the Catholic priest’s remarks on social media and carried out demonstrations demanding his arrest for offending their “religious sentiments.”
The police submitted in the trial court on Aug. 8 that “Father Bolmax Pereira is not required in custody in connection with the [case] registered against him in the Shivaji Maharaj [great king] row.”
Following this police response, the court accepted the priest’s plea for “anticipatory bail” in the case against him. As many as four cases related to the same incident have been registered against Pereira in four different police stations in Goa.
Goa, the tiny former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India, was evangelized by St. Francis Xavier, whose mortal remains are preserved in the Bom Jesus Cathedral. The number of Christians — most of whom are Catholic — has been steadily declining and now comprise a quarter of the state’s 1.6 million population. The state has been ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for more than a decade.
“Anticipatory bail” in the Indian legal system allows the accused to be released from police custody even if arrested for an alleged crime. In Pereira’s case, the court ruled that in the event he is arrested for the crime, he is to be released on a bond of 20,000 rupees ($240) and a surety.
Since the matter was “sub judice” (under consideration by the court and therefore prohibited from public discussion elsewhere), the priest declined to respond to CNA, though in an Aug. 4 statement he expressed “regret over the controversy and misunderstanding” surrounding his remark about Shivaji.