A teen pretending to be a devout Buddhist proved to be anything but at a capital pagoda on Saturday.

Police said the teen had struck up a conversation with an arriving farmer, telling him to hurry to make his offering of food before mealtime ended.

When the farmer left, the teen hopped on his moto and tried to speed off, but a guard at the pagoda’s gate blocked him. In a display that was perhaps unbefitting of the Buddhist principle of nonviolence, bystanders then proceeded to rough up the suspect until police arrived. NOKORWAT