Tension prevailed at Pillappa Garden in Kadugondanahalli on Thursday night when a group of 20 men razed a prayer hall using an earthmover. The demolition of St. Lutheran prayer hall was triggered off by a civil dispute. According to the police, the owner of the land Rahim Shariff had given the General Power of Attorney (GPA) to Patrick.
The police added that Rahim had earlier given the land to Victor and Chakravarthy, who in turn rented the land to David, Jayakumar, Jeremiah Anderson, Vittal and Dinesh to run a catering business in 1993. However, the police said, over the past one year, a prayer hall in the name of Faith Lutheran was built.
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While Patrick questioned it, Jeremiah lodged a police complaint in November against the GPA holder stating he was trespassing into a public prayer hall.
Meanwhile, a counter complaint was lodged against Jeremiah by Rahim Shariff. Since the matter was a civil dispute, the police asked both the parties to settle the case at the court. On Thursday night around 10.30 p.m., around 20 men barged into the church compound and chased away the caretaker James and then started demolishing it using earthmovers and other tools, the police said.