Centre has frozen bank accounts of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity: Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. File Pic

The Union Ministry has frozen all bank accounts of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in India on Christmas (Saturday), said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday.

"Their 22,000 patient and employees have been left without food & medicines," tweeted the CM.

As per an NDTV report, officials at the Missionaries of Charity organisation, whose headquarters are in Kolkata, have refused to comment at this time. There is no official confirmation from the Centre or the Home Ministry also. Reasons for the bank accounts being frozen are unknown.

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, as per an ABP report.

The FIR, lodged at Makarpura police station, was based on a complaint from District Social Defence Officer Mayank Trivedi. The complaint stated that 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 the 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.