Jun 4: Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting by unknown persons allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in the US against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.
This has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.
The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC.
The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.
On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.
Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.
Vandalism of the statue of the apostle of peace comes during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.
In Washington DC, protestors this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.
One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.
In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia."
According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches. It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.
The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9'x7'x3'4". It now weighs 16 tonnes.
It is learnt that the youth from minority community used to distribute sweets on the during the Independence Day procession every year. 
Comments
RSS biggest strenght is Lie. They can't digest the patriotism of muslims. Before the Independence RSS was supporting British, once got the Independence Rats started to come out. They have no moral rights to blame others on patriotism their forefathers were proved their patriotism while supporting British. Jai hind
True, Sangeeth... media always highlight muslims, minority and dalits..
Biased media. There might be some other reason. without reason why we should attack them.
LOL... Exactly Rajeev..
The reason is nothing but they distributed not saffron colour laddu.. they gave yellow laddu. nobody can tolerate this extreme step.. so they attacked
This is the outcome of Amit Shah's visit to karnataka.
Why amicable settlement grab such desh drohi culprit and make a procession let the peace loving Mangaloreans aware of such bjp wings lntention and motive.
Spreading communalism not required in our south kanara dist.
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