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Tension after arrest of temple mahant

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD JULY 8. Tension prevailed for some time in areas under the Kanbha police station on the outskirts of the city after a group gheraoed the station, demanding release of a temple "mahant", arrested along with his driver for possessing nine country-made pistols.

The mahant of the Saryudasji temple in Prem Darwaja locality, Shivdas Ramanandi, was arrested after police, on a tip-off, intercepted a car near the temple. The man at the wheel, who identified himself as the driver of the mahant, was found carrying a pistol in the car, which also belonged to the temple.

The driver, Balkrishna Tripathi, confessed that eight more such pistols were hidden in a three-room "Gokuldham Gaushala" in Kunjad village under the Kanbha police station. Police recovered the weapons and put the mahant under arrest who owned the "gaushala'. It was learnt that though the mahant usually lived in the temple, lately he was making frequent trips to the Gaushala apparently for transportation of the pistols.

What was causing concern was that the temple was on the route of the Jagannath rath yatra on July 12. Though the Jagannath temple, which organises the annual yatra, and the Saryudasji temple were run by different trustees, both are closely associated and the latter also play an important role in the rath yatra. Police said the weapons were believed to have been procured from Uttar Pradesh through a suspended police constable, Rajendrasinh Chauhan, who is being questioned. It was part of a consignment of some 200 such pistols brought by Rajendrasinh in March, many of which were sold during the communal riots. While the mahant failed to give any satisfactory answer for possessing nine pistols, the driver is believed to have told the police that the weapons were meant to be used during the "rath yatra" to foment trouble.

About 300 followers of the mahant, complaining that he had been wrongly framed in the case, surrounded the Kanbha police station demanding his immediate release. Some of them even threatened to commit self-immolation if he was not released, but police persuaded the crowd to disperse.

Even as the Jagannath temple trust has announced trimming of the rath yatra to one-third of its normal length of about four kilometres by reducing the number of trucks, "akhadas and bhajan mandalis" and other vehicles in the procession to ensure its early completion in view of the tension and apprehension among the people of disturbances on that day, the designs of the mahant of the Saryudasji temple are causing concern among the police authorities.

Meanwhile, police and legal experts feel equally concerned over a development in Lunawada town in the Panchamahals district, where the court released all the nine accused in a case of rioting due to lack of evidence. The accused, all belonging the majority community, were arrested on the spot on February 27, a few hours after the train carnage in the neighbouring Godhra station, for rioting and setting fire to some minority shops. But with the police unable to collect enough evidence and the eyewitnesses turning hostile, the court was forced to let go the accused.

The Muslim shopowners were ready for an out of the court settlement and withdrew the complaints instead of appealing to the higher court.

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