KANPUR: Devotees going to a police station to offer prayers! Sounds bizarre, but this happened at Rajpur police station on Monday. A Goddess Lakshmi statue and an owl transformed the place in Kanpur Dehat into a virtual temple, giving the cops a harried time in controlling the over 25,000 crowd of villagers that gathered there to pay obeisance.
As faith would have it, in the wee hours of Monday an owl, considered to be the ‘vahan’ of Lakshmi, landed near a Rs 2.5–crore ‘ashta dhatu’ statue of the Goddess kept in the police station for the last two days. On sighting the bird, the station officer and the diwan tried to chase it away. But despite cracking of belts and hurling of lathis, the stubborn bird refused to budge.
The news spread like wildfire, and by morning there was a deluge of devotees thronging the place. Prayers were offered to Goddess Laxmi and the ‘holy’ owl. As the day progressed, devotees kept pouring in and by afternoon, thousands from nearby areas of Dherapur, Rasoolabad, Akbarpur, Mungisapur Rura and Mangalpur landed at the police station. Milk was offered, garland and flowers showered on the bird and statue alike, and hymns chanted as mark of reverence. t Traffic comes to a standstill.
