No mobile inside temple during rituals: SJTA

Bhubaneswar: A week after Sri Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) started an inquiry into allegation that some servitors had carried mobile phones during Bramha Paribartan of the Trinity, it said today that no phones were taken inside the temple during the rituals.

Informing this to the media, SJTA chief Suresh Mohapatra said, “After inquiry we came to know that no servitor had taken mobile phones inside the sanctum sanctorum during the secret rituals of the deities on June 15 and 16. It was also alleged mobile phones were used to take photographs of the deities and the Bramha, but this is completely false.”

“We have conducted a thorough inquiry on the issue as it was a sensitive matter related to religious sentiments of lakhs of people,” Mohapatra asserted.

Highly-placed sources said that as part of the investigation, mobile service providers were approached by the temple administration to provide details about numbers of mobile phones in use during the sacred rituals inside the temple.

Meanwhile, the temple authorities have dismissed the pictures of Bramha Paribartan and Patali rituals being circulated in social media as fake. It has appealed to the devotees not to believe these purported pictures which belong to an ashram in Bhadrak district.