THE owner of a Barrow takeaway has slammed vandals who threw a brick through a window.

One of the windows at Dhaba Indian restaurant, on Dalton Road, was smashed on Saturday.

“It made me feel horrible,” said Shamim Chowdhury, a friend of Dhaba’s owner, who discovered the damage.

“We are not feeling safe.

“I think it is racism towards the takeaways.”

Several Indian takeaways, including Dhaba, have been caught up in unfounded social media allegations of a grooming gang targeting young women in Barrow.

The owners have strenuously denied the claims.

The damage to the restaurant was discovered around midday.

“The window was smashed, someone had thrown a brick I think, at Dhaba takeaway,” said Shamim, who owns Barrow Indian Cuisine. We found out at about 12 o’clock.”

Sahim Chowdhury, the restaurant’s owner, said police had been notified and are currently investigating the incident.

“We don’t know what time exactly it was broken, but we called the police and the police came,” he said. “They are investigating.”

The broken window has been boarded up and the takeaway is still operating.

“We boarded it up, with it being the weekend we can’t do anything about it,” he said.

“We’ll have to wait until Monday to fix it. We are trying to run a business and things like that happening, it is not good.”

Mr Chowdhury has run Dhaba for three years and said he had never experienced any previous vandalism to his establishment.

This is not the first incidence of an Indian takeaway being targeted in Barrow.

Last month Mithali restaurant had to close after its owners said threats were made against them and their families.

A year-long operation failed to find evidence of Asian grooming gangs in Barrow, police have said. The force’s investigation was also subjected to a peer-review and escalated to a high level within the Crown Prosecution Service as well as the National Crime Agency.