In a possible hate crime, unidentified persons have destroyed a handcrafted statue of Mahatma Gandhi with a sledgehammer at a Hindu temple here after vandalising it earlier this month, media reports said on Friday.
Surveillance video shows a person thrashing a statue of Gandhi with a sledgehammer on Tuesday, before smashing the head off and toppling it over, according to cbsnews.com.
Minutes later, a group of six stomp on it and take turns hammering the statue before taking off, the report said.
Lakhram Maharaj, the founder of Shri Tulsi Mandir, situated in South Richmond Hill was quoted as saying in the report that, “To see them coming after us like this is very painful”.
Maharaj found that the Gandhi statue was reduced to rubble on Wednesday morning. The word “dog’ was spray painted both in front of the temple and down the block, it said. The same Gandhi statue was vandalised two weeks ago, investigating officials said.
“When the Gandhi statue was vandalised, that really flew in the face of all of our beliefs and it’s very disturbing for the community,” Assembly member Jenifer Rajkumar said in the report.
“I cannot show the congregation that I am worried because if I show them that I’m worrying and I’m not strong, how will they be strong?” the report quoted him as saying. The temple authorities cannot afford to replace the Gandhi statue, because it was handcrafted and cost about USD 4,000, the report said.
“I want to know why they did it,” Maharaj asked. This is not for the first time that a statue of Gandhi has been desecrated in the US.
