Protest at Tulja Bhavani temple 'deferred' after police action

A day after it launched an indefinite protest outside the famous Tulja Bhavani temple here in Maharashtra's Osmanabad district to press for the demand to reopen the places of worship, a religious outfit on Friday said it has decided to postpone the agitation.

The announcement comes in the wake of police action against the agitators.

Police had earlier said that after the Adhyatmik Samanway Aghadi launched the agitation on Thursday, notices had been issued to the agitators as permission had been denied for it.

Talking to reporters on Friday, Adhyatmik Samanway Aghadi's regional president Aacharya Tushar Bhosale said that notices were served to the agitators and the pandal where the protest was on was forcibly removed by the police.

"We were carrying out our agitation in a democratic way, but the seers were also threatened that they would be arrested," he said.

Bhosale said that CrPC 144 (which prohibits assembly of people) has been clamped in the area and the agitators were asked to postpone the protest for 15 days.

"We have now postponed the protest, but not withdrawn it," he said.