Scores of per­sons gath­ered on Thurs­day night at the Cunu­pia Mar­ket to ex­press their grief at the death An­drea Bharatt and of­fer prayers for the scores of per­sons who are miss­ing.

Among the re­li­gious lead­ers who took part in the vig­il host­ed by Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit was Or­isha priest Ba­ba Ad­de­lon Brave­boy sum­moned the pow­ers of the Or­ishas to rain jus­tice on those who com­mit crimes against women.

Brave­boy, al­so known as Ban­jela in so­ca cir­cles, said: “I pray for jus­tice against every crime com­mit­ted against women at this time. I call up­on the Or­isha of jus­tice, Chango, you are the Or­isha of jus­tice. I call up­on your pres­ence with light­ning to strike up­on the heads of the en­e­mies, those that are dis­re­spect­ing our women to­day.”

Pen­te­costal Pas­tor Dale Des Vi­gnes urged the com­mu­ni­ty to speak out when they see crim­i­nal acts be­ing com­mit­ted.

Pun­dit Ravin­dranath Ma­haraj said he felt a deep pain for An­drea’s loss. He said her sac­ri­fice was not in vain as it has brought the na­tion to­geth­er in prayer.

“She sac­ri­ficed her life for all of us to bring us to­geth­er in uni­ty, love and to­geth­er­ness,” he said, adding that a spe­cial prayer ser­vice was held for her at his Ch­agua­nas tem­ple last Tues­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Pun­dit Ma­haraj, Hin­du as­trol­o­gy had shown that An­drea would not have been found alive. He said peo­ple must strive to­wards be­com­ing more hu­mane, fight­ing off the evil forces of lust, greed, anger, ha­tred, at­tach­ment and ar­ro­gance.

He al­so plead­ed with women not to dress in a man­ner that would evoke lust­ful feel­ings in men.

Imam Im­ti­az Ali made an emo­tion­al ap­peal to men to look out for their wom­en­folk.

He said: “My heart bled to­day when I heard that news. I said hope when the guy said we will cut off her ears and send it for you, I said it was a grand charge. When I heard that news to­day, that could have been my grand­daugh­ter, that could be one of our daugh­ters. I can’t put my­self in that fa­ther’s shoes right now.”

Mo­hit said she was very dis­tressed that so­ci­ety has de­gen­er­at­ed to the point that when a per­son goes miss­ing fam­i­lies are now wor­ried about whether or not they would find their bod­ies.