COIMBATORE: For the uniformed personnel at the Ramanathapuram police station here, Tuesday began on a religious note. Almost all of them assembled at the Sree Senthamarai Karupparayan Temple in the backyard of the station to participate in a ceremony to propitiate the deity by sacrificing a goat. Later, they hosted a lunch at a marriage hall for their counterparts here. Curiously, this is an annual ritual that is being performed during the Thai month of Tamil calendar for the past 23 years for a strange reason. “In 1989, the Ramanathapuram police station building was constructed on a portion of the temple land on Puliakulam Road. Ever since, the cops have been sacrificing lambs or hens to appease the deity and invoke His blessings,” says Manickam, the temple’s fourth generation priest. Some policemen see this as a “thanksgiving”. Others trust it would bring them good luck. Some perform poojas when they get promotion.A police constable confesses that there was a belief that the pooja would help ward off evil and protect woman personnel on night duty. The temple was owned by local community members. When the government approached them to relocate the Ramanathapuram police station functioning on Tiruchy Road, the elders readily consented to part with a portion of the land “as the presence of a police station would help to arrest crimes in the locality.” Previously, the lunch was hosted on the station premises but the venue was shifted after some officers objected. Station Inspector Venkataraman fights shy of admitting the ‘tradition’. “I was posted in Coimbatore only a few months ago and am not aware of the belief. Some sub-inspectors asked me for permission to perform the pooja on Tuesday out of personal belief. I did not intervene,” he says.
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