Bindu Ammini vows to visit Sabarimala again next year

Kochi: Bindu Ammini, who was attacked by a right-wing group member on Tuesday for attempting to visit the Sabarimala temple, announced that she will be visiting the temple on January 2 next year.

Activist from Kerala, Bindu Ammini, who had joined Trupti Desai's team to visit Sabarimala was attacked with pepper spray when she came out of the office of the commissioner to take some papers from their vehicle.

Bindu had prayed at the famed temple with another woman Kanakadurga on January 2 this 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 Bindu 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.

(With inputs from IANS)