Man arrested for attempting sacrilege at Moruga church

A man from Marac Vil­lage has been ar­rest­ed af­ter he was al­leged­ly caught rum­mag­ing through bags in­side a church in Moru­ga on Sat­ur­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port is­sued on Tues­day, the in­ci­dent oc­curred on Sep­tem­ber 26, when the church was se­cured and locked, ex­cept for an en­trance on the east­ern side of the build­ing that had in­ad­ver­tent­ly been left open.

At about 10.30 pm, an in­for­mant re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that a man had en­tered the church.

Up­on ar­riv­ing at the scene, the in­for­mant dis­cov­ered sev­er­al items scat­tered across the church­yard, in­clud­ing an in­dus­tri­al fan, cur­tains, com­mu­nion glass­es, an elec­tric gui­tar, dec­o­ra­tive flow­ers and a large bot­tle of wa­ter.

The items were col­lec­tive­ly val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4,386.

The in­for­mant sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ed the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion, prompt­ing PCs Guer­rero, Lal­la and Ram­nath to re­spond.

Up­on en­ter­ing the church, the of­fi­cers al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered the sus­pect rum­mag­ing through bags in a room be­hind the al­tar.

He was im­me­di­ate­ly ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion, where he re­mains in cus­tody pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Po­lice have clas­si­fied the in­ci­dent as sac­ri­lege, an of­fence in­volv­ing the des­e­cra­tion or vi­o­la­tion of a sa­cred place or ob­ject.