Litigants throng Judge Uncle temple in Kerala
Neck-deep in legal trouble, a mining baron from Bellary from Karnataka has decided to knock on the doors of ‘Judge Uncle’ in neighbouring Kerala’s Kottayam district. The judge in this case is the presiding deity of a small shrine located at the corner of Cheruvally Sree Devi temple, with an ever-growing reputation of helping people wriggle out of legal mess.
The belief is Judge Ammavan (Uncle) does not disappoint and the mining baron has made the trip to the temple to make a special offering.
Those who throng the temple are controversial figures and to give them anonymity, the shrine opens for 15 minutes and that too only at night, after the main Cheruvally temple closes after evening prayers. Visitors are the veritable who’s who of south India: Malayalam actor Dileep is in jail for his alleged involvement in the abduction and sexual assault of a top actress and his brother Anoop was at the temple to offer special prayers on his behalf.
P Gopalakrishnan, president of the Travancore Dewasom Board that administers the hill shrine at Sabarimala, was also here last November when a petition challenging its age-old tradition of not allowing women into the temple was being heard in the Supreme Court.
The Bellary baron is facing a myriad of court cases, including some relating to mine lease violations.
“One of my cases will come up before the court soon and my astrologer advised me to visit the Judge Uncle,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“People from faraway places come here. And many believers request the temple to keep their identity confidential,” said temple manager Gopinathan Nair.
“People involved in minor disputes to major crimes come here with lot of hope,” said Deva Narayanan, a retired government employee. The mining baron doing the rounds happens to be just one of them.