New Delhi: A mysterious fire has reduced to ashes a Christmas crib kept inside the premises of a Catholic church in Delhi.
“I noticed the crib completely burned after the morning Mass,” Fr Cyril Patrick, parish priest of the Church of Resurrection in Rohini, told Matters India on Saturday.
The church under the Latin rite archdiocese of Delhi is situated in a northern suburb of the national capital.
The incident occurred a month after St Sebastian’s Church in Dilshad Garden, east Delhi, was gutted under a similar mysterious fire.
Father Patrick said the police team have arrived on the scene and are inspecting the CCTV footage. He said the crib was put up at a corner of the church campus some 15 meters away from the main gate.
The priest also said the crib was intact when he closed the gate around 11 pm on Friday night. “We started the Mass at 7 am and it was over by 7:30 am,” he added.
K J Thomas, a parishioner, said the police suspect it to be a case short circuiting. However, the second camera of the CCTV shows something falling into crib from above around 2:30 am. “The fire apparently started some 10 minutes later,” he told Matters India.
Thomas, a schoolteacher, said they had used grass and plywood to create the crib. “Only the front iron grill is intact, everything else has been reduced to ashes,” he added.
Parishioners suspect the use of some inflammable material to set fire as it was raining in the area during the night and morning.
Delhi has been experiencing winter showers for the past two days.
There has been no progress in the probe into the Dilshad Garden church incident that happened on December 1, 2014.
A week later, the window glasses of the Syro-Malabar church in Jasola, south Delhi, was broken after someone threw stones at it while the evening Mass was on.
The Delhi police had provided security for all church in the national capital area during Christmas and New Year period.