The colony in Doranda. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, April 5: If you refuse to pay chanda (subscription) for the function of your neighbourhood temple, you better be ready to hear the expletives that will follow, and that too through a loudspeaker.

A family in Doranda learned this the hard way when a group of men, denied money, hurled abuses through a loudspeaker.

The group insulted the ?sinners? for refusing to pay donation to a religious function at the nearby temple. The heckling stopped 45 minutes later when the police were called in.

State government employee Kumar Bhaskar, a resident of Chhappan Set Government Colony, was at work when a group of youths knocked on the doors of his first floor residence yesterday afternoon. Bhaskar?s mother, who was alone in the house, opened the door. The lady, in her sixties, said: ?The man told me ?Prasad khaihey aur loud speaker suniye (Eat the prasad and listen to the announcement)?.?

While the humiliation was going on, Bhaskar?s wife, a teacher in a DAV school, returned home from work. Hearing her husband?s name being called out, she asked a youth what was going on. The query resulted in a re-run of the expletives.

She immediately called her husband, who informed the Doranda police. The middle-aged man, who offered the prasad and was leading the ?punishment? campaign, was identified as Matadeen Vijayvargiya, the owner of a grocery shop in the area who had organised the puja.

Bhaskar said some people had come to him asking for donation for the event a few days ago, but he had refused. This, he added, led to today?s humiliation. The police, however, only intervened to stop the group and released them after warnings.

Without any signs of remorse, Vijayvargiya accepted that he had wielded the microphone and hurled abuses at the Bhaskars. ?Pujas cannot be held if people do not contribute,? he added.

The man said he would apologise through a loud speaker only if the family did the same.