New Delhi: Unidentified people vandalised and painted saffron a Muslim shrine close to Madhya Pradesh’s Narmadapuram city early on Sunday, March 13 – the second such case in the district in the last two months.
The shrine is 50 years old and is around 40 km from the district headquarter of Narmadapuram, Indian Express has reported.
Narmadapuram – both the district and its headquarter – was called Hoshangabad until February this year, when the Union government approved of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government’s decision to rename it.
The caretaker of the shrine, Abdul Sattar, is quoted in Indian Express as having said that he was informed by locals at 6 am on Sunday that the shrine’s minaret, tomb and entrance had been painted saffron, its wooden doors broken and dumped in the Maru river and a handpump on the compound, uprooted.
Villagers complained to police but allegedly did not receive a response until they blocked traffic on the State Highway 22.
Later, police registered an FIR under section 295 (A) (for deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code.
Work to restore the shrine, including repainting it, has begun with the help of two fire brigade vehicles.
“It does not look like the act is done by local youths as people of both communities live here peacefully and there has been no communal tension in the past,” Town Inspector of Makhan Nagar police station Hemant Shrivastav told Express, adding that the priority was to restore the shrine and then arrest the accused.
Navbharat Times has mentioned in its report that a month ago, a similar incident had happened a little more than a month ago in Pachmarhi of Narmadapuram district itself and that police are looking for a connection between the two cases.
On January 14, unidentified people vandalised a Muslim shrine near Pachmarhi’s Denwa Darshan, a Dainik Bhaskar report notes.
This article first appeared on thewire.in