New Delhi: Miscreants broke into a church in outer Delhi’s Rohini and took away Rs 5,000 in cash from the donation box in the early hours of Friday.
The police said that the entire incident was captured on a CCTV camera installed in an adjoining school. Two juveniles were apprehended on the basis of the CCTV footage later in the evening.
According to the police, the two accused had scaled the boundary wall of St Basil Church around 3.30 am. Prior to that, they had been loitering around in the area for half an hour.
Father George Kurian Thomas said that when he came to open the front door of the church to prepare for the morning prayers, he found its glass panes broken and some items lying scattered.
“The church has been there for the past 25 years and this is the first time that such an incident has happened. When I opened the inner entrance door, I found many things lying on the floor. The window was shattered, the Holy Cross had been damaged and the donation box was lying empty,” he lamented. There is a school for the physically challenged adjacent to the church. The CCTV cameras installed in it helped cops identify the accused. “The case came to light after Thomas came to the church in the morning and informed us,” said DCP (Rohini) Mahender Nath Tiwari.
A case of theft in a religious place was registered and 10 teams were formed to nab the accused. Police said that the juveniles — both aged 17 — live in a village in Sector 3 and had done a recce of the area before committing the crime. “We arrested the duo after scanning the CCTV footage,” the officer added. There are 240 churches in the city.
