Jayamala chargesheeted in Sabarimala case

Kerala Police today filed a chargesheet against Kannada film actress Jayamala, four years after she made a controversial claim that she had touched the idol of Lord Ayyappa at the famous Sabarimala temple in violation of the hill shrine custom.
Jayamala, 50, has been listed as the third accused after astrologer Parappanangadi Unnikrishnan and his Bangalore-based aide Raghupathy for their alleged "deliberate and malicious act to outrage" religious sentiments by hatching a conspiracy involving her.
The chargesheet was filed in the first class judicial magistrate court at Ranni in Pathanamthitta District.
The 'revelation' by the actress in June 2006 raised a storm. A crime branch probe found that it was only a "conspiracy" hatched by the astrologer and his aide.
The chargesheet said the accused were involved in a deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings under section 295 of Indian Penal Code.
Jayamala, a former president of Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce, had claimed she had in her prime youth entered the sanctum sanctorum and touched the idol of the presiding deity.
Women in the 10-50 age group are barred from entering the temple.
She had faxed her claim to the temple administration office when an astrological examination of the conduct of the temple affairs, known in local parlance as "deva prasnam", was on by Unnikrishnan.
The astrologer had claimed then that the poojas and rituals of the shrine had not been performed with due sanctity and dedication by priests and there were even signs of the idol having been touched by a woman.
It was after this that Jayamala made the claim that she had visited the temple when she was just 18 and she wanted to do penance for that.
With the incident leading to a storm, the government had then ordered a crime branch probe.
The inquiry, as part of which the actress was questioned in Bangalore, concluded that her claim of having been pushed by the rushing devotees into the idol chamber appeared "most illogical and implausible".
According to the investigators, the whole episode appeared to be a conspiracy to buttress the claim of the astrologer about the poor state of temple affairs.

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