Bindu Ammini set for next visit to Sabarimala
Kochi: After failing to get police protection to visit Sabarimala temple along with Trupti Desai on Tuesday, Bindu Ammini, one of the two women who had prayed at the famed temple on January 2 this year, on Wednesday announced that she will be visiting Sabarimala on January 2 next year.
“The upcoming visit is to mark the anniversary of our visit to the temple for the first time. This new pilgrimage will see hundreds of women coming from various parts of the country. This is being organised under the Women’s Wing of the Renaissance Movement. I don’t think the Kochi police will be providing us security but we will be going,” said Ammini.
Incidentally Ammini, had received Desai and her six-member team who arrived from Pune at the Kochi airport, on Tuesday morning and then approached the Kochi City Police Commissioner’s office for security to proceed to Sabarimala.
The Renaissance Movement which has the patronage of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was launched last year and it was on January 1 this movement staged a Women’s Wall from the northern tip of the state to the southern tip.
Ammini maintained that though the Supreme Court, earlier in November gave a 3:2 verdict referring the Sabarimala review pleas to a larger seven-judge bench, it maintained that it has not stayed its September 28, 2018 order allowing women of all ages to enter the temple.
However, the temple bans entry of women in the 10-50 age group.
Since the beginning of the two-month Sabarimala festival on November 17, seven women in the banned age group and from outside Kerala, who sought ‘darshan’ were not allowed entry to the temple by the police and on Tuesday Desai and her team also failed to go past Kochi and had to return.