(LifeSiteNews) — The perpetrator of a 2022 firebombing of Dairy State pro-life group Wisconsin Family Action has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a yet-to-be-determined prison sentence of less than 20 years.
In the early hours of Mother’s Day 2022, following the May leak of a draft of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade, WFA’s Madison headquarters was hit with an arson attack that burned one of the walls. The building was also defaced with a graffiti threat that “if abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either,” as well as an anarchist “A” symbol and “1312,” a numerical representation of the acronym for “All Cops Are B—s.” A Molotov cocktail that failed to ignite was thrown through a closed window as well.
In March 2023, police in Boston, Massachusetts, arrested Madison biochemist Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury at the airport for a flight to Central America, after an investigation found his DNA at the crime scene. He was charged with “one count of attempting to cause damage by means of fire or an explosive,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), a crime carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and maximum of 20.
Now the Associated Press reports that Roychowdhury, now 30, signed a plea agreement on Nov. 20 that admits his guilt in the attack in exchange for a recommendation that he not receive the maximum punishment. A judge will review the plea deal on Dec. 1.
DNA of two other individuals was also found at the scene, although it is currently unknown if it has been linked to anyone else who may have participated in the crime.
The attack was part of a broader nationwide wave of pro-abortion anger, threats, and violence triggered by the leak and subsequent confirmation of Roe’s demise, which included 88 attacks on nonprofit pregnancy centers and more than 200 attacks on Catholic churches, as well as intimidating protests outside Republican-appointed justices’ homes — with the approval of the Biden White House and then-House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi — and even a man who planned to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Roychowdhury’s crime was not the only incident that Wisconsin Family Action endured, either. Following the attack, the group received a series of angry and threatening voicemails from pro-abortion radicals, including “Burn, little Jesus freaks” and other death wishes, a declaration that the arsonist was a “true American patriot,” obscenities, general expressions of contempt, and a suggestion that pro-abortion violence was some sort of logical progression from abortion activists unsuccessfully “trying for years to deal with this nonviolently.”
