The Madras High Court Bench in Madurai has directed the Madurai Collector and district police to grant permission and necessary protection to ‘jallikattu’ event at Sakkudi village near here on the eve of Muppili Swamy Temple Maha Sivarathri festival on March 8.
A Division Bench of Justices R. Sudhakar and V.M. Velumani passed the order despite objections raised by a government counsel on the grounds that a visitor’s gallery erected by the organisers had collapsed in 2012 and that the venue did not have sufficient space for collecting bulls. Repudiating the contentions, B. Mahendran, counsel for the temple trustee P. Rajasekaran who was also the president of Tamil Nadu Veera Vilayattu Padhugappu Peravai, said his client had been conducting jallikattu every year without any complaints. The counsel stated that Sakkudi was one among the villages which had found a place in the district gazette under the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act, 2009, for conducting the sport every year.
