The Kerala police on Saturday attempted to fend off the allegation that they had filed a doctored report in the Supreme Court (SC) to justify the Government’s false claim that 51 women between the age of 10 and 50 had visited Sabarimala during the 2018-19 Mandala-Makaravilakku season.
The Opposition and various other organisations opposed to the entry of women to the temple had punctured holes in the report on Friday stating that at least one person named in the controversial list was a man and the rest were women above the age of 50.
Their accusations had left the Government red-faced with Devaswom Board Minister Kadakampally Surendran and Travancore Devaswom Board president A. Padmakumar stating that the onus was on the police.
Top police officers told The Hindu that they had prepared the list solely based on the information provided online by the applicants who had availed themselves of the law enforcement’s digital queue system to reserve their darshan in advance. There was no case for the police to fact-check the personal information furnished by the pilgrims.
The police had given the list to the legal counsel in the SC in New Delhi in a sealed cover. Officers said they had expected total confidentiality. However, the names, addresses, Aadhar details and phone numbers had ended up in the public domain. Now many of the women who had worshipped at Sabarimala were in a state of denial fearing reprisal from radical elements as well as social ostracisation.
After the SC lifted the ban on women of reproductive age from worshipping at the shrine, the police had no legal mandate to verify the age of women trekking to the temple.
The 51 women had downloaded the printable coupons, which are barcoded machine-readable entry passes, and got the tickets stamped by the police on their way to Sabarimala at Pampa check-point.
Most of the women who made the trek were from neighbouring States. The man whose name had cropped up in the list headed a group of 20 women pilgrims, most of them in the so-called “prohibited” age group.