Question mark on relevance of Shastra-puja

INDORE: Certain incidents that have occurred in Madhya Pradesh have put a question mark on the relevance of Shashtra-puja performed in Navratra, that too, without taking sufficient precaution.
Recently, a 14-year-old boy Manoj Bhoi, son of Radheshyam Bhoi, sustained bullet injuries when a cop fired mistakenly. He was preparing his service revolver for the Shashtra-puja on the occasion of Vijay Dashmi in Pardeshpura police station.
ASP Dilip Soni said that sub-inspector SD Sharma was cleaning his service revolver. He fired to check the weapon withput realizing there were bullets in it and shot the boy.
Commenting over a similar incident taken place in 2009 in state capital, a Delhi-based activist Subhash Gatade made a valid point, “What’s religious about worshiping weapons?” he wrote in an article published in a blog.
He mentioned a similar incident in which one Naresh Motwani, a 50-year-old flour mill owner, who was an old activist of the RSS, was killed. The incident took place on September 28, 2009 in the campus of Saraswati Shishu Mandir, Kamala Nagar, Bhopal.
Gatade wrote, “In fact, his unfortunate death because of a shot fired from another pistol, while it was being cleaned and prepared for the Puja, was initially presented as ‘suicide’. A senior RSS activist who was present during the cremation had no qualms in endorsing the cause of Motwani’s death as told by his own colleagues. To save themselves from any further involvement in the case they even denied their presence at the spot of the death and also allowed the accused to flee from the spot with the weapon.”
According to thim, “It is a different matter that closer media scrutiny and the pressure put by the deceased’s family members to investigate the case brought forth the real story of his death. It was revealed that he was killed when another person (who was absconding since the death) was cleaning his pistol and forgot that the gun was loaded and ‘inadvertently’ shot the victim. Of course, as far as the family members of Naresh Motwani are concerned they have firmly rejected the accident theory and alleged that it was a case of cold-blooded murder.”
Questioning the entire development in last few years and the ritual, he said, “Close watchers of the Shastra Puja know that earlier, only non-firearms were brought for the ritual. For the past few years, even firearms are being included. Disturbingly the police -which has enough sprinkling of majoritarian elements in it – and even media -which is called a ‘watchdog of democracy’- also turns its blind eye to it.”