Servitors shut Puri Jagannath temple for 12 hours over cop's 'misconduct'

BHUBANESWAR: Jagannath temple in Puri plunged into crisis as servitors, aggrieved over alleged misconduct of a constable on Thursday evening, closed the shrine for over 12 hours on Friday and stopped performing rituals, leaving the deities hungry and devotees stranded outside. The temple that is usually opened around 4.45 am every day was made accessible for devotees at 5.15 pm after the servitors agreed to start the rituals following hectic parleys with the district administration.

Trouble started early morning when servitors refused to open the gates of sanctum sanctorum in protest against the alleged unruly attitude of a constable to a fellow servitor at Lion’s Gate (Singha Dwar) on Thursday evening. “I was accompanying three guests from West Bengal when a policeman stopped us and sought the guests to show identity cards. He also said one of the guests looked like a non-Hindu, whose entry is prohibited in the temple. When I requested him to allow us to go inside, he abused and manhandled me,” said Taluchha Bhagaban Mahapatra, the servitor.

Biswajit Parija, the constable, said Mahapatra assaulted him when he was discharging his duty. “I had asked the servitor whether his guests are from Puri because the special passage was made for local residents, who are required to show identity cards for easy entry. Locals need not stand in queue as per administration’s order. Mahapatra said the three devotees were non-Puri residents. When I told him about the rule, he assaulted me,” Parija said. Both lodged complaints against each other at Singhadwar police station on Friday.

As the stand-off took heavy toll on the temple functioning on Friday, the district collector Jyoti Prakas Das and superintendent of police Sarthak Sarangi held a series of meetings with the servitors inside the temple and requested them to start the rituals. “We managed to convince the servitors, who started the rituals at 5.15 pm. Devotees, who were deprived of entering the temple since morning, had smooth darshan. However, Mahaprasad for devotees could not be cooked due to the delay in rituals. Mahaprasad for deities only were prepared,” Das told TOI.

Earlier in the day tension prevailed as hundreds of devotees, who had waited outside the temple for hours, breached police barricades and tried to barge into the temple. Devotees slammed the servitors for neglecting the deities and leaving the deities hungry. Amid the impasse, the Puri king Dibyasingha Deb expressed his concern and appealed to the government to immediately intervene. Deb said nothing is more important than the smooth rituals of the deities. Opposition Congress slammed the government for failing to maintain discipline in the shrine.

This was the second time the temple witnessed chaos this year as the servitors had stalled rituals for several hours on April 16 and 17. The deities had to remain hungry for the two days due to conflict between two groups of servitors.