A statue of St Sebastian located in the Trinity Church in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district was vandalised by two unidentified men on Sunday, The Hindu reported, citing the police.

The police have registered a case against two unidentified men based on the complaint lodged by Bastin Joseph, the assistant vicar of the church.

The case has been lodged under sections 295 (destruction, damage, or defilement of a place of worship or an object held sacred, with intent to insult the religion of a class of persons), 427 (mischief causing damage), 448 (punishment for house-trespass) of the Indian Penal Code, reported The News Minute.

In his complaint, Joseph said that the incident took place between 10 pm and 11.45 pm. The two men came to the church on a motorcycle and one of them scaled the gate to enter the property. He broke the glass pane around the shrine with a brick and then vandalised the statue, the complainant added.

The watchman at the church saw the incident and reported it to the priest, according to the complaint.

Special Sub-Inspector of Police P Murugasamy told The News Minute that they have not arrested anyone so far.

“There were CCTV cameras in the school and church but when we saw the footage, we could not see anything clearly,” he said. “So we are asking people nearby for any footage captured in cameras installed in other buildings.”

The police said that they have collected a few surveillance camera visuals from the spot and were looking for the two men.

Since the last month, Christians have been attacked or Christmas celebrations disrupted in many states with Hindu supremacists alleging forced conversions.

On December 29, a group of Hindutva supremacists had attacked a Dalit family residing in Tukkanatti village in Karnataka’s Belagavi district after accusing them of converting their neighbours to Christianity.

A day after Christmas, a statue of Jesus Christ was desecrated in Haryana’s Ambala Cantonment.

Again in December, a widely shared video showed a group of women in a Dalit home fending off Hindutva supremacists in Karnataka’s Tumakuru district. The women had questioned the men who reportedly barged into the home and tried to stop the Christmas celebrations.

While some incidents of disruptions have made it to the news – for instance, in Assam’s Silchar, Haryana’s Pataudi and Pandavpura in Karnataka – several others are said to have gone unreported.

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Three Christmas attacks in India where the police failed to act against Hindutva mobs