Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh): A Scheduled Caste organisation on Monday alleged that some “influential people” locked-up a temple in Ujjain district to prevent a groom, a police constable, from entering the religious place.
Alleging discrimination by caste, All India Balai Federation president Manoj Parmar along with Federation’s state youth wing president Satish Sindal and others met SP Satyendra Kumar Shukla and ADM Satosh Tagore, here on Monday, and handed over a memorandum to them demanding an immediate ban on such acts of influential people.
The Federation leaders claimed that a police constable, Meherban Parmar, wished to visit the Lord Ram temple on Sunday night during his marriage procession in Bardia village. “However, the influential people of the village locked the temple's gate to prevent him from entering the temple,” they claimed. Bardia village has a population of around 5,000 and the temple is for the public, Parmar said. He said, a similar incident was also averted in Ujjain itself on Monday during the wedding procession of one Kailash Parmar, posted in the health department.
Meanwhile, Bhatpachlana police station-in-charge Sanjay Verma said that the Rajput community in the village submitted some documents claiming that the temple was built by them and they have been maintaining the religious place for the last several years. “They informed that one person in the family of the temple priest has died and the temple is closed due to ‘sutak’ (Hindu belief of abstaining from worship for a specified period following the death of a family member),” he said. Police said that the builders of the temple told them that it was shut following the death in the family of the temple priest.
On the other hand, SP Shukla told Free Press that the police constable and their family members took darshan of Ram temple at Bardia village under Barnagar sub-division on Monday itself in the presence of SDM and SDOP.
