Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) is seek­ing ret­ri­bu­tion af­ter an­oth­er of its tem­ples was des­e­crat­ed and six mur­tis de­stroyed. This in­ci­dent oc­curred at the Bharatiya Vidya Ab­hyas Man­dali Tem­ple on Watts Street, Curepe, yes­ter­day.

The per­pe­tra­tor jumped over the tem­ple fence and used a sledge­ham­mer to de­stroy the mur­tis and oth­er items. Neigh­bours re­port­ed hear­ing pound­ing sounds com­ing from the build­ing just af­ter 4 am.

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the SDMS vis­it­ed the tem­ple and con­demned the de­scra­tion which they de­scribed as a de­lib­er­ate and tar­get­ed af­front against the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the SDMS, said: “This wouldn’t be any or­di­nary per­son seek­ing to jump this fence to come in here. Our in­for­ma­tion from our own in­ves­ti­ga­tions thus far from the neigh­bours is that at about 4 to 4.30 am they start­ed hear­ing some nois­es, pound­ing nois­es. They didn’t know what was re­al­ly tak­ing place,” he said.

“The out­er part of the tem­ple, as you can see, hous­es a lot of very beau­ti­ful mur­tis. They have all been de­stroyed, des­e­crat­ed. A lot of them, you can see that the heads have been de­cap­i­tat­ed. The ac­tu­al heads for all of these mur­tis are ac­tu­al­ly on the ground. They have been de­cap­i­tat­ed at the necks.”

Fol­low­ing sim­i­lar at­tacks at oth­er tem­ples, the SDMS has been in­stalling CCTV sys­tems/

He added: “Once we have made atone­ment, and a lot of that was ba­si­cal­ly seek­ing for­give­ness, mak­ing atone­ment for any harm that would have prob­a­bly been brought to a re­li­gious place and the gods. On this oc­ca­sion, we will make atone­ment, but I have al­ready put in my per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tion. Once that pe­ri­od of atone­ment and that cer­e­mo­ny is over, there will be some swift ret­ri­bu­tion that will have to be un­der­tak­en from a re­li­gious per­spec­tive.”

Pun­dit Rishi Ma­haraj, sec­re­tary of the Pun­dit Parishad with­in the SDMS, com­plained that the au­thor­i­ties have dis­re­gard­ed the sever­i­ty of the at­tacks. He said the Prime Min­is­ter and the Op­po­si­tion Leader had dis­missed the in­ci­dents as the ac­tions of home­less or des­ti­tute in­di­vid­u­als.

“What has hap­pened here is a clear in­di­ca­tion to us that even those in au­thor­i­ty are not un­der­stand­ing and they are fail­ing us to a great ex­tent be­cause we have echoed in the past that these are acts of sac­ri­lege and des­e­cra­tion.

“If you look at it, all in­di­ca­tions, no at­tempt to have the place robbed, as we say, to en­ter in­to the in­ner parts of the mandir. It is clear­ly not a rob­bery but clear­ly a well-or­gan­ised act by whom­so­ev­er the per­sons may be,” he said.

St Joseph Po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent.