An incident akin to that in Tamil movie 'Palayathamman' ccured at the Arulmigu Kandaswamy temple at Thiruporur near Chennai.
In the movie, a woman accidentally drops her baby into a temple's 'hundi' and the child becomes the 'temple's property'.
At the Arulmigu Kandaswamy temple, a devotee inadvertently dropped an iPhone into the hundi. The authorities now claim that it is temple property.
A devotee Dinesh, hailing from Vinayagapuram, was forced to leave his iPhone with the temple authorities as they refused to give it back to him as he had dropped it into the hundi and now, it belongs to the deity. However, they agreed to give him the SIM card and to let him download data from the phone.
A month ago, he, along with his family, went to the temple and after worshipping the lord, dropped his offerings in the hundi. While pulling out the currency notes from his shirt pocket, his iPhone accidentally fell into the hundi.
As the hundi was over an elevated platform, he couldn't retrieve the phone.
Worried over the incident, Dinesh approached the temple authorities but they told him that once the offering is placed in the hundi, it is considered as the property of the deity and cannot be returned.
According to the tradition, the hundi is opened only once in two months.
Dinesh lodged a complaint with the HR and CE (Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments) officials, asking them to inform him when the hundi would be opened.
On Friday, the hundi was opened but the authorities refused to give back the phone to him. Instead, they gave him the SIM card and asked him to download any important data from the phone.
Dinesh had already obtained a new SIM card and left it to the authorities to decide on his plea to return the phone.
Temple EO Kumaravel said the tradition of treating anything dropped in the hundi as belonging to the temple and deity would be followed and the phone would be remain in the temple custody.
