The President of United States Donald Trump on Monday, said that the defacement of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue by unknown miscreants was a “disgrace,” days after it was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting during the nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian embassy in Washington DC was vandalised on intervening night of June 2 and 3 by unknown miscreants with graffiti and spray painting, amid massive protests across the United States over the killing of African-American man, George Floyd, at the hands of the police in Minneapolis on May 25.

Trump in a brief comment said, “It was a disgrace,”at the White House on Monday when asked about the incident.

The Indian embassy did register a complaint with the US Department of State which is now conducting an investigation into the incident, as also with the Metropolitan Police and National Park Service.

The Indian Embassy is also working with the US Department of State, Metropolitan Police and National Park Service for expeditious restoration of  Mahatam Gandhi’s statue. Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador to India, Ken Juster, had apologised over the desecration of the Gandhi statue, last week.

“So sorry to see the desecration of the Gandhi statue in Washington, DC. Please accept our sincere apologies,” Juster said on Twitter.

“Appalled as well by the horrific death of George Floyd and the awful violence and vandalism. We stand against prejudice and discrimination of any type. We will recover and be better,” he had added.

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, during their visit to India in February, visited the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally given them a tour of the historic place.

“The First Lady and I have just had a pleasure of visiting Mahatma Gandhi’s Ashram, a few miles from here, where he launched the famous Salt March,” Trump had said during his address at the Namaste Trump rally at the Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad on February 24. A day later, Trump and the first lady also laid a wreath at Raj Ghat in New Delhi.

Pictures of Trump and the first lady with Gandhi’s spinning wheel during their visit to the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad are seen hanging on the walls of the White House.

Last week, top US lawmakers and the Trump Campaign condemned the vandalisation of the statue.

“Very disappointing,” tweeted Kimberly Guilfoyle, advisor to Donald J Trump for President Inc. and National Chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committees.

North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis said, “It’s disgraceful to see the defacing of the Gandhi statue” in Washington DC. “Gandhi was a pioneer of peaceful protesting, demonstrating the great change it can bring. Rioting, looting and vandalising do not bring us together,” he said.

Senator Marco Rubio said “more evidence that violent radicals and run of the mill crazies have hijacked legitimate protests to create anarchy or for their own purposes”.

Protests against the custodial killing of Floyd turned violent in the US and prestigious monuments were damaged. In Washington DC, protestors burnt a historic church and damaged monuments like the Lincoln Memorial.

US Ambassador to India Ken Juster apologised for the incident. “So sorry to see the desecration of the Gandhi statue in Wash, DC. Please accept our sincere apologies,” he said.

“Appalled as well by the horrific death of George Floyd and the awful violence and vandalism. We stand against prejudice & discrimination of any type. We will recover and be better,” he said in a tweet last week.

Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American, was handcuffed and pinned to the ground in Minneapolis by a white police officer who kneeled on his neck as he gasped for breath.

His death has triggered violent protests across the US, leading to the death of at least five persons, arrest of over 4,000 people and damage to property worth billions of dollars.

Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.

In Washington DC, protesters this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000 during his state visit to the US.

In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia.”

According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches.

It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.

The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).

The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9’x7’x3’4″. It now weighs 16 tonnes.