The video of a memorial stone at the historic Vasai fort being damaged by a youth has gone viral on social media, eliciting outrage and calls for action against him. The youth appears to have carved an ‘S’ on the stone to which he is seen setting fire with a song playing in the background that ends with ‘bewafa’.  

The fort

The Vasai Fort was formally christened as the Fort of St. Sebastian in the Indo-Portuguese Era and is a monument of national importance protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It has memorial stones in the name of soldiers, created in 1680 by the Portuguese. There were around 250 martyred soldier’s symbolic memorial stones in the fort but only 150 are visible today while others are damaged and destroyed, claim archaeologists.