In Queens, New York, criminals damaged a statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside of a temple in their second assault in 15 days.
A couple of vandals were captured on surveillance footage smashing a Mahatma Gandhi statue with a sledgehammer outside the Shri Tulsi Mandir in South Richmond Hill on Tuesday night. One of them managed to knock the statue down, but the other six trample on it and take turns hammering the shattered statue in what can only be described as overkill.
According to the New York Post, six individuals defaced the Gandhi statue with vulgar language at 1:30 am on Tuesday before smashing it to pieces.
MORE ABOUT DESTRUCTION OF GANDHI STATUE:
The vandalised Gandhi statue was uncovered, according News, by Lakhram Maharaj, the founder of the Hindu temple Shri Tulsi Mandir in South Richmond Hill. Both in front of the temple and down the street, the word “dog” was spray painted on the ground.
He told CBS2, “To watch them coming after us like this is incredibly distressing.”
On August 3, 2022, less than two weeks prior, the identical statue was defaced.
The newspaper cited Constable Amy Boudreau, a representative for York Regional Police, as saying, “We recognise that the impact of hate crimes on the community at large is far reaching and we thoroughly investigate all incidences of hate crimes and any hate-bias situations.”
Jennifer Rajkumar, a member of the New York State Assembly, tweeted her condemnation of the incident and her commitment to finding peaceful ways to “fight anti-Hindu bigotry.”
The culprits should “be immediately caught, charged, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she further demanded. In the city, hate crimes are now up 15.7% over the previous year, according to a CBS News investigation.
