New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the Centre had frozen all bank accounts of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in India, calling the move "shocking".
"Shocked to hear that on Christmas, Union Ministry FROZE ALL BANK ACCOUNTS of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in India! Their 22,000 patients & employees have been left without food and medicines. While the law is paramount, humanitarian efforts must not be compromised," Mamata Banerjee tweeted on Monday.
The Missionaries of Charity, which was started by Mother Teresa, has its headquarters in Kolkata.
The Union Home Ministry said the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) renewal application of Missionaries of Charity was refused on December 25 for not meeting eligibility conditions, PTI said.
On December 14, an FIR was registered against the Missionaries of Charity in Gujarat for allegedly luring young girls into Christianity at a shelter home run by it in Vadodara. The organisation had rejected the charge.
READ | Missionaries Of Charity Denies Charge Of 'Luring Girls Towards Christianity'
The FIR lodged at Makarpura police station was based on a complaint from District Social Defence Officer Mayank Trivedi. As per the FIR, Trivedi found that girls at the home were being "forced" to read Christian religious texts and participate in prayers of Christian faith, with the intention of "steering them into Christianity".
According to a report, the organisation was booked under IPC sections for deliberate and malicious acts to outrage feelings of any class by insulting its religious beliefs (295 A), deliberately uttering words to wound the religious feelings of a person (298) as well as the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, which provides for prohibition of forcible conversion.