In yet another incident involving a Christian place of workship, two motorcycle borne miscreants wearing masks threw stones at a church in New Panvel in Navi Mumbai in the early hours of Saturday, the Navi Mumbai police said.
A Navi Mumbai control official said the incident took place around 1.30 am on Saturday in sector 19 of New Panvel. “Two unidentified people came on a motorcycle, and hurled stones in the direction of a statue installed and encased in glass towards the front of the Saint George Church. One of the two stones hurled damaged the glass encasing. No one has been arrested yet,” the official said.
A police official at Khandeshwar police station in New Panvel said though no eyewitnesses were available, the police have seized the footage from a close circuit television installed. “The CCTV footage showed that they had masked their faces. We are trying to identify the miscreants on the basis of the footage,” the officer told The Hindu late on Saturday.
In view of a series of incidents of vandalism reported at churches in Delhi, the Navi Mumbai police deployed additional security at the church.
The incident comes a few days after former Mumbai Commissioner Julio Rebeiro in an article voiced the atmosphere of increasing insecurity felt by the minorities in the face of campaigns like "ghar wapasi" undertaken by right wing organisations.
