Trupti Desai offers prayers at Trimbakeshwar temple

Nashik

Desai, along with three of her colleagues took darshan at around 6 am and left after nearly 15 minutes, said H P Kolhe, in charge of Trimbakeshwar police station.

The Bhumata Ranragini Brigade chief along with her aides followed the dress code, wet cotton or silk sarees, as decided by Trimbakeshwar Devasthan Trust  and stood in the queue with other devotees before entering the sanctum sanctorum, he said. Later, they left the temple town in a vehicle.

Interacting with news persons outside the temple after the darshan, Desai said their struggle for gaining entry into Shani Shingnapur in Ahmednagar and now at Trimbakeshwar temple has succeeded.

Desai vowed to take forward the struggle for entry of women into worship places across the country.

Recently, the Trimbakeshwar Devasthan Trust decided to allow women into the temple’s ‘garbha griha’ for an hour every day with a rider that they must wear wet cotton or silk clothes while offering prayers in the core area.

The development is significant as it came days after women were permitted entry to the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. The issue of gender bias hogged national limelight in January when hundreds of women activists attempted to storm into the Shani Shingnapur temple. After months of protests, and the Bombay High Court observing that entering a temple was a fundamental right. The Shingnapur temple trust finally decided to allow women to enter the sacred platform (chauthara) — on which a rock idol of Lord Shani is placed — on April 8.