New Delhi, Aug 19 - 'It was the darkest night of my life,' recalls 45-year-old Ravinder Nath Pradhan, who a year ago saw his house and paralysed brother being doused with petrol and burnt by a fanatic mob. Since then life has been drudgery, he says, and justice is 'nowhere near'.

'It was around 8 p.m. A mob of some 500 people attacked the village. They targeted Christian homes. The church was demolished. My house was destroyed. Within moments they flung petrol on my wheelchair-bound younger brother and torched him. We fled for our lives,' Pradhan, a retired soldier, told IANS.

His peaceful village Guttergaon, in Kandhamal district, where Christians and Hindus had been living in harmony, was scarred for ever. After the violence of Aug 24, 2008, his family and a group of 120 other Christians were forced to flee their homes. They made their way to a relief camp at Bhubaneswar.

'We went back once in December to reap our crop. Tension still loomed large. We (Hindu and Christian families) used to share all our joys and sorrows. Now they say a passing hello, and enquire where you are headed and that's it,' he added.

Having returned to his village now, Pradhan relies on alms from the local church for survival. 'We live underneath trees where we once had our own home.'

Pradhan is one of the thousands from the Kandhamal district in Orissa, where communal clashes and rampaging mobs forced over 25,000 Christians to flee from their homes and villages an year ago.

The area had witnessed widespread violence following the murder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his aides at his ashram Aug 23 last year. Rightwing Hindu groups held Christians responsible for Saraswati's killing.

Another victim is Kanak Rekha Nayak, 24, from Raikia village. A mother of two girls, she witnessed her husband being butchered by a mob Aug 25, 2008.