The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) on Monday announced a number of measures to protect and safeguard the devotees visiting the temple, after a six-year-old girl was found dead following a suspected wild animal attack on the steps leading to Tirumala. During a high-level meeting with district and forest officials on Monday, TTD chairman B Karunakara Reddy announce some serious measures for the visitors.
About the incident
Last Saturday, a six-year-old girl was mauled to death after a Leopard attacked the girl while she was climbing the footway to Tirumala along with her family. The body of a girl was identified from Dornapadu village in the Nellore district and was found in the area near the Narasimha Swamy Temple.
D Naramsimha Kishore, the chief vigilance and security officer for TTD, claims that the daughter asked her father to purchase her something, but he declined, thus she walked on and vanished. He claimed that the girl has previously gone missing but had been located and returned to her parents by shopkeepers, later she again went missing, but this time she couldn’t be found.
New guidelines to follow in the Tirupati Temple
Each devotee walking the walkway will now be given a wooden stick for self-defense, as per new regulations. Devotees with below 12-year-old children will be allowed to trek the foot pathway between 5 am and 2 pm.
The remaining devotees are welcome until 10 pm. The TTD, an independent organization that oversees the temple, announced that only between 6 am and 6 pm, two-wheelers be permitted to operate on Ghat roads.
Forest staff who have expertise in handling wild animals are hired for taking care of the devotees. Additionally, followers can only form groups with the provision of a security guard. The trust has outlawed the practice of offering food to the animals; also actions will be taken against anyone selling such food.
According to the trust, hotel owners along the walking pathways are expressly forbidden from discarding or dumping food waste.
500 CCTV cameras will be installed along both walking paths, according to the temple trust, and if necessary, drone cameras will also be purchased. “24/7 wildlife outposts with animal trackers and doctors will be made available round-the-clock.” Additionally, concentrate lights will be installed such that the light is visible for 30 meters around them.
Executive officer, Dharma Reddy announced that from this moment forward, only groups of 100 people each accompanied by a security guard will be permitted in this risky location, where the girl vanished along with the deployment of 30 TTD security guards and 10 more forest guards.
The TTD also requests a fence along the road, according to the Wild Act, forest authorities will make the decision. The trust stated that “after we receive the report from them, we will act accordingly,” and that warning signs about wild animal assaults would be put in places including Seventh Mile, Galigopuram, and Alipiri. Now that their Divya Darshan tokens don’t need to be scanned, Alipiri hikers can also go by road to Tirumala.
Other cases of attack of wild animals in the Tirupati Temple
A horrifying accident took place 2 months ago, where a three-year-old boy was attacked by a Leopard on the Tirumala ghat. The leopard grabbed by the toddler’s neck and took him away but the police saved him later.
In 2019, a similar case has come across where two families were attacked by wild animals, according to some devotees, two people fell off their two-wheeler and suffered injury after a wild animal attacked them and two minutes later another two-wheeler was attacked by a wild animal when they reached the spot and the 12- year-old girl fell off from the bike and injured her leg.
