With the deployment of additional forces around the areas of Naina Devi Temple, Nainital, the police administration in Nainital has succeeded in stopping animal sacrifice in the temple precincts on Ashtami on Tuesday — a practice that is sanctified under the name of bali partha had been a tradition for ages. Naina Devi Temple, a hoary one with its history dating back to more than a century, was the place where the devotees used to sacrifice goats in their hordes on the occasion of Ashtami.
The success can be viewed against the backdrop of High Court having directed the Nainital administration to take measures to prevent sacrifice during Ma Nanda Devi Mahotsav at Naina Devi Temple, Nainital. The administration had earlier appealed to the devotees to swap sacrifice of goats with offerings of coconut and other fruits to the deity. Make-shift police post was set up at the temple premises to ensure the court order was implemented in full.
Despite tight security, some devotees attempted to enter the temple premises stealthily to put the goats on the sacrificial wood by way of adhering to the age-old rituals. Facing resistance form police, some of them were found arguing with the law keepers. However, police kept hawk-eyed vigil and the temple premises were spared the gore that used to flow on this day over the previous years.
Nainital Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Vimmi Sachdeva said five-tier security arrangements were made around the temple premises to stop the sacrifice of goats. A company and two platoons of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel were deployed too at important places. “Not a single goat was sacrificed, thanks to the fool-proof arrangements put into place,” SSP added.
Sources said around 350 persons were supposed to have brought goats to be sacrificed this year. last year, around 250 goats were slaughtered in the temple. Observers opined that the gory spectacles of the dumb animals being brought to be killed in the deified precincts of a hoary temple amounts to a slur on the fair face of Hinduism.
“Hinduism is nothing if it were not pantheism. Police have done a commendable work in sparing the temple the sacrilegious blood bath of innocent animals,” said one of them from Nainital.