Break-in at Hindu Temple in Texas’ Brazos County; Donation Box, Safe With Valuables Stolen

The Brazos County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a burglary at the Shri Omkarnath Temple in Navasota, Texas, earlier this month. On Jan. 11, burglars entered the temple early morning and stole the donation box. A video captured by security cameras inside the temple, “shows a person ignoring the shrine and going straight to the donation box,” and then using the temple’s cart to wheel it out the door,” as reported by KBTX 3.

Following the invasion, board members told KBTX 3 that they are upping the security at the only Hindu temple in the Brazos Valley. “There was a sense of invasion, that sense of loss of privacy when something like this happened to us,” board member Srinivasa Sunkari told the news outlet. He said the burglars “broke in through the side window,” and took “the donation box and a safe in which we keep our valuables.” He added that “the priest and his family who live in an apartment right behind the temple, they are safe.”

He said the temple will take “extra precautions to make sure our priest is safe and his family is safe and our place of worship is safe.” He is confident that they will “rebound,” and hope that “ something like this doesn’t happen to anybody in the future.”