Jammu temple attack draws more crowds than devotees

The temple priest said that usually most devotees prefer the Ram temple reportedly constructed in the 19th century by Maharaja Gulab Singh. The newly-constructed Dattatreya temple, also called the Gita Mandir, hardly used to have any devotees before the attack.

Fed up of narrating the story about how the militant blew himself up inside the temple, the priests have finally decided to keep its door locked. Passersby are now told that the temple room will be opened for darshan after special prayers.

‘‘Nobody is interested in knowing about the deities. Everybody wants to about the attack and what we were doing that time,’’ said Naresh Sharma, a priest at the nearby Natraj Temple. Some visitors refuse to buy their theory that the militants could not enter the temple. ‘‘Then how come the Shudhi Puja was organised?” they ask.

Visitors’ target is 65-year-old Jia Lal, a priest whom a militant tried to kill from point-blank range but failed as he had run out of bullets. That helped Ram flee. Lal does not believe that militants blew himself up. He says the militant was punished by Lord Rama for killing his devotees.

Each visitor fires questions at priests. ‘‘Though I was not present at that time but I have to listen to every detail from colleagues. It will be disappointing for devotees if I told them that I wasn’t around on that day,’’ said another priest.

Central to the crowd’s curiosity is how the militant blew himself and why did the trigger-happy militant fail to kill priest present near the Dattatreya temple. ‘‘I have grown tired of narrating the same story to every visitor here,’’ said Lachman Dass, a shoe-keeper.

Now most visitors are not Vaishno Devi pilgrims but local residents. And the curiosity levels are undiminished. ‘‘I have decided that once the bandh gets over I will visit the temple and look at the walls,’’ says Urmilla of Gandhi Nagar.