Christian leaders in poll-bound India have condemned the desecration of a prayer hall on the outskirts of India’s financial hub Mumbai.
They have urged police to nab the perpetrators for ransacking and defacing a Protestant assembly hall in Thane, around 45 kilometres away from Mumbai in western Maharashtra state.
The Maharashtra police on Oct. 6 told reporters that a probe is on to arrest the “unidentified miscreants,” who allegedly vandalized the prayer hall in the Tulsidham area in Thane under the Bombay archdiocese.
Bombay, the name given by colonial Britain in the 17th century, was changed to Mumbai when a pro-Hindu party government headed Maharashtra in 1996.
Nobody has been arrested till now in the case, registered under Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code, police admitted.
The attack on “a place of worship is disturbing,” Father Nigel Barett, spokesperson of the Bombay archdiocese, the largest diocese in the country, told UCA News.
What is more disturbing is that “such incidents occur when elections are around the corner” to polarize voters, Barett added.
A woman from the Protestant church lodged a police complaint on Oct. 5 after she found the assembly hall premises ransacked.