Gandhinagar: Four members of various Hindu outfits have been detained as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order in Gujarat over their alleged plans to hold Rath Yatra in Ahmedabad despite High Court orders, police said on Monday.
The AHP organisation, along with many other Hindu outfits had planned to gather in Ahmedabad and make a representation to the Jagannath temple trustees to continue with the tradition of Rath Yatra despite the Gujarat High Court order against it.
The Ranip police in Ahmedabad had detained the four, including Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad (AHP) Gujarat president Nikunj Parikh. The AHP and Rashtriya Bajrang Dal Gujarat unit had openly opposed the High Court’s order.
Demands by many Hindu outfits to hold the Rath Yatra on June 23 had gone viral on the social media.
According to police, AHP, Akhil Bhartiya Hindu Parishad, and Bajrang Dal etc had planned to gather at the Arjun Bhagat Aashram at Chandlodia in Ahmedabad and forward a demand to the Jagannath temple trustees to hold the procession as planned.
“We have detained four persons from these outfits as a precautionary measure. We detained Parikh and one other persons from their hosues around 2 am, while the other two were detained from Arjun Ashram at 10 am. We had deployed 8 to 10 police personal at the ashram, following intelligence inputs,” an official at the Ranip police station said.
Citing the Supreme Court’s stay on Lord Jagannath’s Rath Yatra in Puri in Odisha amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Gujarat High Court had on Saturday stayed the Rath Yatra procession in Ahmedabad city scheduled for June 23.
Earlier, Ahmedabad’s Jagannath temple authorities had been making preparations to hold the 143rd religious procession even though the state had not taken a clear stand on whether to grant or deny permission.