Rahul Easwar had volunteers ready to desecrate Sabarimala temple with blood

Rahul Easwar, a scion of the family of tantris leading the stir against women’s entry to the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple, said he had lined up 20 volunteers to desecrate the sanctum sanctorum by spilling their own blood so that the temple could be closed for any woman who reached it.

Easwar made the revelation while speaking to reporters in Kochi after he was released on bail on Tuesday. He said that the plan was still on. “Not just the government, we too need a plan B or C,” he said.

He said the temple could be closed for three days if it was desecrated by blood or urine and nobody had the right to ask for its reopening.

Easwar said the chief minister was right to say that the Ayyappa shrine did not belong to the tantris. “Sabarimala belongs to Lord Ayyappa, not the government or the devaswom board.” He added that the authorities should not try to let non-believers inside the temple until the Supreme Court took a final decision. He also said that devotees had decided to protect the customs even if the court did not took a favourable stand.

He said that they would use all the means within the constitutional limits to bar young women from entering the shrine.

The famous Sabarimala temple, which opened for the monthly pooja on October 17 after the Supreme court order, had witnessed a stand-off over the issue with angry devotees preventing at least a dozen women in the "barred" age group from entering the shrine.

On September 28, a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, had lifted the centuries-old ban on the entry of women of child-bearing age into the shrine.