Wor­ship­pers of the Lakrani Ganesh Mandir in Pe­nal are dis­ap­point­ed and up­set af­ter their tem­ple was bro­ken in­to and des­e­crat­ed last wee.

The per­pe­tra­tor smashed a mur­ti, pulled off the clothes from the oth­er mur­tis, stole a speak­er box and left a cig­a­rette butt be­hind.

The theft was dis­cov­ered by the tem­ple’s vice pres­i­dent Rekha Cassie when she went to open the tem­ple at Gopie Trace on Fri­day around 8 am.

The tem­ple was ran­sacked. A Ganesh mur­ti was in pieces on the ground and a large speak­er box was miss­ing. A flash dri­ve was al­so miss­ing but it was sub­se­quent­ly found be­hind a cup­board.

“We find cig­a­rette, like he was smok­ing and he pelt it in the back by the cur­tain. We lucky the tem­ple did not burn down,” said Cassie.

She be­lieves on­ly one man car­ried out the act, as he was seen via CCTV footage walk­ing along the road with their speak­er box.

Cassie said she would usu­al­ly open the tem­ple every day but it re­mained closed on Thurs­day be­cause of flood­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Re­call­ing what she met on Fri­day, she said, “We saw the tem­ple was bro­ken in­to through the back door. The per­son kicked open the door, burst up the locks and en­tered the tem­ple, ran­sacked the tem­ple, came in­side, searched the mur­tis be­tween the clothes to see if there was mon­ey hid­den there, dam­aged our do­na­tion box and took one of the speak­ers from the tem­ple.”

She said they don’t leave mon­ey in the tem­ple but not­ed that dur­ing night­ly prayers, they pick up mon­ey and place it by the tem­ples.

Be­ing a self-fund­ed tem­ple, she ex­plained that the mon­ey is used to buy gro­ceries and pay the elec­tric­i­ty bill.

Cassie lament­ed the lack of re­spect be­ing shown for places of wor­ship.

“This is a tragedy. It is very de­press­ing. We did work in this tem­ple just a few months ago. We paint over, bought new chairs and we were look­ing for­ward to the Ganesh Ut­sav. Every­thing passed re­al­ly nice. The vil­lagers were hap­py. And right af­ter every­thing fin­ished, to come and meet this is re­al­ly de­press­ing.”

She said from tonight, they will be­gin an­oth­er three nights of wor­ship.

Giv­en this ex­pe­ri­ence, she had this ad­vice for oth­er places of wor­ship, “Just be care­ful, lock up. You nev­er know who could be in your tem­ple or in your church or in your mosque com­ing to pray, but some of them not just com­ing to pray, they just com­ing to scru­ti­nise to see what you have and what you don’t have so they could come back and car­ry it out.”

Cassie not­ed that the tem­ple does char­i­ty work in and around the area and she urged that if some­one is in need of help, they should ask for help in­stead of steal­ing from the tem­ple.

Sgt Bood­lal, PC Ho­sein and PC Ram­dass, of the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion, vis­it­ed the scene and in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

So far this year, sev­er­al places of wor­ship have been van­dalised and des­e­crat­ed, in­clud­ing a Hin­du tem­ple in Cara­po, the St Fran­cis Ro­man Catholic Church in Bel­mont and the St John’s An­gli­can Church in Pe­tit Bourg, where an his­toric bell was stolen.