Mother Mary Grotto Vandalised in Bengal's Raidighi Village

A grotto dedicated to Mother Mary was found uprooted and vandalised beside a church on Monday morning in Khari Bamuner Chak, a Christian-majority village in Raidighi, South 24-Parganas, West Bengal, and police have begun an investigation with no suspect yet named.

Babul Malik, a local resident, was the first to see it. He woke on Monday morning, walked past the church, and found the small shrine inside its grilled enclosure smashed apart. He told Khokon Ghosh, a local Christian leader, and within hours the whole village knew.

A grotto is a small sacred structure built to resemble a cave, usually holding a statue of the Virgin Mary. In Khari Bamuner Chak it stood beside the church, inside a protective metal enclosure, a place where villagers stopped to pray on their way past. Someone came in the night and tore it up.

The village falls under the Baruipur Catholic Pastoral Region. Father Ujjwal Mondal, the priest-in-charge of the region, visited the site on Monday to assess the damage, and church authorities lodged a complaint with Raidighi police. Officers inspected the grotto and opened a probe, but they have not publicly identified a suspect, and the motive has not been confirmed.

A village that woke up to a broken shrine

Khari Bamuner Chak is a Christian-majority village, and the grotto was not a grand monument. It was the kind of small, loved shrine that belongs to a neighbourhood: candles left by mothers, flowers left by children, prayers whispered on ordinary mornings.

That is why the damage has hit so hard. The people who found it were not reading about an attack somewhere far away. They were looking at the place where they themselves pray, broken open before breakfast.

Herod Mullick, secretary of the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba, a community advocacy organisation, condemned the incident. Worshippers and members of the local Christian community called a meeting for Monday afternoon to decide what to do next, and fear is now running alongside the anger.

The fear is easy to understand. A shrine inside a locked enclosure, beside a church, in a village where most people are Christian, was still reached in the night. If that place is not safe, villagers are asking, what place is?

The wider pattern in South 24 Parganas

The Raidighi vandalism did not happen in isolation. Days earlier, a mob disrupted a church inauguration at Narayantala in the Basanti area of the same district. Around 30 to 35 people allegedly stormed the ceremony, damaged the church's cross, assaulted priests and devotees, and smashed the mobile phones of people trying to record what was happening.

Bishop Subrata Chakraborty was among those gathered for the inauguration, and several people were injured. The Bangiya Christiya Pariseba described that attack as an attempt to intimidate the minority community, and police said at the time that an investigation was under way.

On November 5, the same organisation held a large prayer gathering at Rani Rashmoni Road in Kolkata, a public show of faith in the heart of the city. The very next day, the Basanti church came under attack. The sequence has left Christians in the district wondering whether their gatherings are being watched.

The numbers behind the fear are stark. According to data from India Hate Lab, at least 60 incidents of attacks on Christians were recorded across 13 districts of West Bengal between May 13 and September 20, 2026. Raidighi is the latest name on a list that keeps growing.

The pattern is not confined to Bengal. In Nigeria, church leaders have demanded an end to the killings, as Northern Christian Leaders Demand End to Killings in Nigeria reports, and families in Kaduna are still waiting for loved ones held captive, as in Latest: 17 Kidnapped Worshippers Died in Captivity in Kaduna, CSW Says. In England, a war memorial statue of Jesus was decapitated days before Remembrance Sunday, as Jesus Statue Decapitated at St Alban's Church Warrington War Memorial Vandalised as Hate Crime shows.

What the police can and cannot say yet

Raidighi police have inspected the site and started their probe, but the official picture is thin. No individual has been named as a suspect. No motive has been established. The report does not say whether the act was deliberate, and until the investigation produces answers, the village is left with a broken shrine and unanswered questions.

That silence is part of the pain. When a sacred place is damaged and nobody is held to account, the message villagers hear is that it could happen again tomorrow, and that nobody would stop it.

For now, the grotto stands damaged inside its grilled enclosure, and the statue of Mother Mary waits for the village to decide what comes next. The community will gather, the priest will pray with them, and the police will keep looking. But the question hanging over Khari Bamuner Chak is the one no official can answer yet: who did this, and will they come back?

The people of Raidighi are not asking for much. They want their shrine rebuilt, their church safe, and their children able to walk past the grotto without fear. Whether they get that depends on what the investigation finds in the coming days, and whether the 60 incidents counted before this one finally produce a reckoning. Untill then, the village keeps its candles lit and its doors watched.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.