surat a pamphlet war has erupted in the protestant christian community in the city over the alleged sale of the prime property worth crores of the ip mission trust at nanpura the gujarat christian service society gcss the registered trust managing and administering the properties and institutions of ip mission trust organized a meeting to counter the allegations on sunday wallace christian secretary of gcss told toi there are some unscrupulous elements trying to misguide the cni community members the ip mission trust has given an inprinciple approval for the development of its properties in surat and anand for the construction of affordable houses and other facilities for the cni members we are not selling any property to anyone christian added the gcss manages crores of rupees worth of properties belonging to ip mission trust in gujarat state but all the properties are lying unutilized and we want to develop various projects for the upliftment of our community members members of the cni the largest group of protestant churches in india said that recently the former bishop of pune was jailed and several other serving and retired cni bishops including former bishop of gujarat vinod kumar malaviya are accused of complicity in a scheme to sell churches properties to the real estate developers and pocket the cash in october 2012 mumbai high court ordered the rt rev vijay sathe to be remanded into custody on charges of fraud forgery and breach of trust for allegedly seeking to sell the afghan memorial church in mumbai to property developers and pocketing the proceeds the former bishops of mumbai pune and gujarat are also being sought by police prosecutors claim that up to a dozen senior church leaders who acted as trustees to a shell corporation alleged to have been created to divert church properties into private hands may be implicated in the scheme there have been incidents in the past wherein the managers of gcss have sold off the land to the private developers in surat anand borsad and ahmedabad and earn huge amount of money none of the christian members have been given the benefit however we do not want the gcss to trade our church lands to pocket cash for their own pleasure said a senior cni leader asking anonymity