Unidentified people used a sledgehammer to destroy a handcrafted statue of Mahatma Gandhi at a Hindu temple here after vandalising it earlier this month, according to media reports on Friday.

According to CBSNews.com, surveillance footage shows a person thrashing a statue of Gandhi with a sledgehammer on Tuesday, before smashing the head off and toppling it over.

According to the report, a group of six stomp on it and take turns hammering the statue before fleeing.

"To see them coming after us like this is very painful," Lakhram Maharaj, the founder of Shri Tulsi Mandir, situated in South Richmond Hill was quoted as saying in the report.

On Wednesday morning, Maharaj discovered the Gandhi statue had been reduced to rubble.

According to the report, the word "dog" was spray painted both in front of the temple and along the street.

The same Gandhi statue was vandalised two weeks earlier, according to investigators.

"When the Gandhi statue was vandalised, that really flew in the face of all of our beliefs and it's very disturbing for the community," Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar said in the report.

According to media reports, the New York Police Department is investigating both incidents as possible hate crimes.

According to Maharaj, many people in the community are now afraid to visit the temple.

"I cannot show the congregation that I am worried because if I show them that I'm worrying and I'm not strong, how will they be strong?" the report quoted him as saying. The temple authorities cannot afford to replace the Gandhi statue, because it was handcrafted and cost about USD 4,000, the report said.

"I want to know why they did it," Maharaj said. This is not the first time that a statue of Gandhi was desecrated in the US.

Unknown people vandalised an 8-foot-high Gandhi statue in Manhattan's Union Square in February of this year.

Khalistani supporters desecrated a Gandhi statue in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC in December 2020.

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House Press Secretary at the time, described the event as "terrible."