Alappuzha: Parents paid, 26 kids ready for banned Chooral Muriyal ritual

Alappuzha: The sponsors of banned Chooral Muriyal ritual are luring parents of children to pierce their bodies with huge amounts of money.

Local people say they offer as high as '70 lakh as Dakshina and 26 kids are ready to undergo the painful ritual on March 11.

The parents receive money during the handing over ceremony at the Chettikulangara temple. They started bringing their kids to the temple from 6 pm on Monday.

They were first taken to the temple pond for a bath, made to wear a white dhoti, garlanded and handed over with the blessings of priests. DC was able to film the act of cash exchange between sponsors and parents in front of the temple.

While handing over ceremony was progressing right in front of the temple, a lady who held a wad of currency notes was seen fearlessly giving it to guardians of the kid she bought.

Most of them seemed to belong to underprivileged families, and both kids and parents looked tense as the ceremony took place. Some stood sombre, letting their kids to be taken away. The ceremony lasted till 9 pm.

These kids henceforth will be kept in isolation at the residence of the sponsor for seven days. All these days the Asans (masters) will engage in squeezing their flanks so that they could pierce the needle easily. Apart from this, they will be part of fasting and several other rigorous rituals.

Though DC tried to ask questions to the parents who left kids in turn, they refused to reveal either their bane or address. They appeared tutored by the Asans with the offer of inducements including cash, gold ornaments and garments.

These kids will miss the school for a week, local people say. "This regressive ritual survives in this modern age due to the lust for money of people, despite a High Court ban," one of them said insisting anonymity. "The irony is that no children from the sponsor’s family will be used for this purpose."

There was a Devaprasnam (a ritual to know the will of the deity) a couple of years ago which concluded that the children should be a blood relation. But, it has never been followed. "The organisers don’t want to stop this as it’s a money-spinning business. Nowadays, the devotees found no difficulty to get children," he said."And there is social taboo still exists in the society that the children once used for this ritual will lose their grace."