A day after his claims that a temple in Bihar's Madhubani district was washed and purified soon after his visit there for obeisance, Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Monday ordered a probe.
Strict action will be taken if anybody is found guilty, the CM warned even as the temple priest stoutly denied allegation in this regard.
Majhi told reporters after presiding over 'Udyami Panchayat', that the Darbhanga divisional commissioner and inspector general of police, Darbhanga zone, will jointly probe whether idols and premises of Parmeshwari Devi temple located in Anradhari village were washed and purified soon after his visit there for obeisance a few months ago.
On reminded that the Mines and Geology Minister Ramlashan Ram Raman and Janata Dal-United MLC Vinod Kumar Singh have denied that the temple was cleaned after the visit, Manjhi said he was not in the habit of speaking lies in public.
Raman had narrated the incident to him not once, but twice after which he chose to go public to highlight bias against Dalits in civil society, the chief minister said.
Though the minister now denied having said so, an ex-MP Devendra Yadav who represented Madhubani Lok Sabha seat, had called him from New Delhi to inform that the temple was washed within half-an-hour of his visit nearly three months ago, Manjhi said.
Manjhi said he had kept quiet then and decided against raising the issue since Bihar was going through by-poll in ten assembly seats. But now has gone public after Raman reminded about it on a couple of occasions in recent past, the CM claimed.
Temple priest Ashok Kumar Mishra, however, refuted the chief minister's charge saying that the temple premise was not washed and purified soon after the latter's visit, but it was done so in the evening as per routine. "The temple premises are washed twice a day -- morning and evening -- every day for decades," Mishra told
Recalling the CM's visit, the priest said that the former was taken inside temple in the afternoon on that day to enable him worship Goddess Bhagwati amid chanting of hymns and was offered sacrament like any other devotee.
A JD-U MLC Vinod Kumar Singh, who had visited the temple with the chief minister, also corroborated the priest's account of sequence of events in temple on that day and said that Manjhi was led inside with all dignity and respect to offer worship to the deity.
Neither the temple was washed after the chief minister's visit nor the priest and temple management showed any bias against the dalits in whatsoever manner, he said.
The JD-U MLC said that he has spoken to the mines and geology minister who has denied having said anything to the CM in this regard. Raman was not available for his comment.
Manjhi had on Sunday harped on prevalence of caste bias against the Dalits and Mahadalit people in Bihar and elsewhere in the country and claimed he himself was a victim of such prejudice as a temple was washed soon after his visit for obeisance.
Image: Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi
