A BURY businessman who put up a sign describing a vandal who targeted his office as a “dirty pervert drug dealing grass” has been charged with a public order offence.

Mr Nazier Din, aged 44, was arrested on Tuesday, hours before the chipboard sign outside his MCM Ltd premises in Walmersley Road was scheduled to be taken down after police said they had received complaints.

An angry and infuriated Mr Din put up the sign, which read “a dirty pervert drug dealing grass did this”, last Friday after a brick was thrown through his office’s front bay window, causing £2,000 worth of damage.

Later, after being threatened with arrest, he taped over the word “pervert”. And mindful of possible complaints from passers-by, he added the words, “Apologies: this sign is not mean to offend the general public”.

After being warned again by police that he faced arrest, Mr Din had arranged for the sign to be taken down on Tuesday afternoon. But he was arrested and charged by police earlier that morning.

He said: “I am very upset. The reason why I put up the sign was so that the person responsible for the vandalism would step up to the mark and complain about it. This window will cost me £2,000 to replace.

“When police came to see me initially, they said the sign was causing offence to some people and advised me to remove it. I had been trying to arrange for this to happen before I was arrested.”

Mr Din, who has operated his accident management and car hire firm for 12 years, added: “First and foremost, I would like to apologise if we caused any offence. It was never our intention to do this. We wanted people to know that I was a victim of a crime and that the office had not shut down.”

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said complaints had been received. He said Mr Din had been charged with the use of threatening, abusive, insulting words, behaviour to cause harassment, alarm and distress.

He has been bailed to appear before Bury Magistrates on November 20.