GUWAHATI, India - A Christian organisation said on Saturday it was considering closing down its schools in India's northeastern Manipur state following killings and extortion threats from separatist rebels.
"We don't rule out closing Catholic schools in Manipur," Father George Plathottam, director of Don Bosco Communications, told a news conference in Guwahati, one of the main cities in northeastern India.
"The situation in Manipur is most critical and (we) just can't continue to risk our people to militant attacks," he said.
Don Bosco organisation, which runs schools in Manipur, has lost five of its personnel in rebel attacks in the past six months. The last was on Wednesday when militants shot dead three Catholic priests.
Police said the killings were because the priests had refused to pay extortion money and were unrelated to a spate of violence against the country's minority Christians in recent years.
Christians, who account for barely two percent of India's billion-plus population, and Hindu activists have been at odds over the issue of religious conversions.