KOLKATA, March 23: An Indian state government and one of the country’s leading bookstore chains have withdrawn a US-published book from stores because it included a sketch of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

The 900-page “History of the World: Earliest Times to the Present Day” was imported from a Massachusetts-based publishing house and sold in India for the past few weeks until Muslims in West Bengal state in the east of the country protested.

“We were completely in the dark about the presence of a sketch of the Prophet in the book,” Anniyan Nair, the central manager of Crossword, which has 28 stores across India, told Reuters from Mumbai by phone late on Wednesday.

“As soon as this issue was brought to our notice, we decided to take them off the shelves and stop selling it in India. We respect religious sentiments,” Nair said, adding the books were removed on Wednesday from Crossword stores.

Thousands of copies of the book have already been sold around India, book sellers say.

“The books will not be used in any of the schools of Bengal and all of them will be taken off the shelves of libraries,” West Bengal School Education Minister Kanti Biswas told Reuters.