The Supreme Court will hear a plea for police protection by two women who entered Kerala’s Sabarimala temple defying traditionalists opposed to females of menstruating age offering worship at the hill shrine.

Following threats by hardline groups Bindu Ammini, 40, a law lecturer at Kerala’s Kannur University and Kanakadurga, 39, a civil servant, had gone into hiding for almost two weeks after entering the hill shrine. But when Kanakadurga returned home on January 15, she was attacked by her mother-in-law and landed in hospital with injuries.

The two had moved the top court on Thursday citing threat to life after. Senior advocate Indira Jaising appeared before a bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi and requested an urgent hearing, saying it was a matter of life and liberty for the two women.

The plea sought a court direction to all authorities to allow women of all age groups to enter the temple without any hindrance and to ensure security and safe passage, including police security to women wishing to enter the temple.

A Supreme Court bench had in September ordered the shrine’s doors to be thrown open to women of all ages, overturning a decades-old ban on the entry of female devotees of childbearing age, imposed on grounds that the presiding deity, Lord Ayyappa, is a celibate.

The court order enraged traditionalists, who won the support of both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in their fight to keep women in the taboo age group out of the temple.

Protestors foiled the entry of women aged below 50 years into Sabarimala until Kanakadurga and Bindu Ammini, with a police escort, entered the shrine. Their entry sparked widespread unrest in Kerala. Fearing a backlash, the two women stayed in an undisclosed location under state protection for almost two weeks.

As carried in HT