The News Minute| February 25, 2015| 1.00 pm IST(Last updated: February 26, 2015 | 12.09 pm IST)A prayer hall in Mangaluru was vandalised by miscreants who pelted stones at a grotto of Mother Mary outside the hall on Tuesday night. The attack was by "anti-social elements", Karnataka Health and Family Welfare Minister U.T. Khader who visited the church on Wednesday said."Some anti-social elements threw a stone and damaged the glass of a statue to create insecurity and panic in society," Khader said.The minister said the site was littered with cigarette butts and hinted that the group might have been small. He said police are looking for the culprits and that other citizens have also joined the operations.Saint Joseph's Prayer Hall in Deralakatte, around 10 km from Mangaluru."It is between good society and bad society. All 90 percent of the good society will join against them," he said. Khader said the prayer hall, located beside a graveyard in an isolated place, is 250 years old and was renovated 10 to 15 years ago.Few days ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had reached out to the Christian community and in a speech made in New Delhi he vowed to protect all religious groups and condemned all incidents of violence against religious minorities.(This story originally referred to the religious establishment as "church", but it has been changed to "prayer hall" on the basis of updated information.)Tweet