Indian-origin Catholic priest shot dead in Kansas
Seneca (US), Apr 4 (AP): An Indian-origin Catholic priest was shot and killed by a man who approached him at his parish rectory in the town of Seneca, Kansas, church officials said.
An Oklahoma man is being held on suspicion of the killing.
Officers called to the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Seneca on Thursday afternoon found Arul Carasala with gunshot wounds outside the rectory, the Nemaha County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post. The 57-year-old priest was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he died.
“I am heartbroken to share the tragic news of the death of Fr. Arul Carasala, who was fatally shot earlier today," Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
"This senseless act of violence has left us grieving the loss of a beloved priest, leader, and friend.”
Carasala had been the pastor at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Seneca since 2011, according to his profile on the parish website.
Sheriff's deputies and officers with the Seneca Police Department later arrested Gary Hermesch of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Authorities say Hermesch, 66, is being held in the Nemaha County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder.
The Associated Press left a phone message with county prosecutor Brad Lippert seeking additional information.
Authorities have not released a possible motive for the shooting or said whether the suspect and the priest knew each other.
Kris Anderson, the parish's director of religious education, told the AP on Thursday through tears that she knew few details.
“From what we know, an older man walked up to him (Carasala) and shot him three times,” she said.
The priest's death left people in shock in Seneca, a city of about 2,100 where Carasala had been the pastor at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church since 2011, according to his profile on the parish website. He was ordained as a priest in 1994 in his native India and had served in Kansas since 2004. He became a US citizen in 2011.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas said in a Facebook post that there was no ongoing threat to the community, but that he recognised the “pain and shock” the priest's death had brought to the community.
“Fr. Carasala was a devoted and zealous pastor who faithfully served our Archdiocese for over twenty years, including as dean of the Nemaha-Marshall region,” he wrote.
“His love for Christ and His Church was evident in how he ministered to his people with great generosity and care. His parishioners, friends, and brother priests will deeply miss him.”
Seneca is about 60 miles (97 kilometres) north of Topeka, about 90 miles (145 kilometres) northwest of Kansas City and about 300 miles (480 kilometres) north of Tulsa.
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
