Jammu, Jun 3 (PTI) Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits paid obeisance at the famous Ragnya Devi temple here on Kheer Bhawani festival on Tuesday amid tight security arrangements.

Kheer Bhawani Peeth in the Janipur area of Jammu was constructed as a replica of the original shrine at Tulmulla in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal after the mass migration of the community from the valley in the early 1990s.

The Kheer Bhawani Mela is one of the biggest religious functions of Kashmiri Pandits.

Amid chants of religious hymns and the ringing of temple bells, devotees made a beeline for the temple since 5 am, and the crowd swelled through the day.

“There was a huge rush of pilgrims throughout the day. Thousands of pilgrims visited the shrine to pay obeisance till the evening,” Sushil Watal, a member of the temple’s managing committee, said.

Walking barefoot, the devotees carried rose petals that were offered to the goddess, while the temple was lit with ‘diyas’ (earthen lamps) and decked up with colourful flowers.

“It was difficult to offer prayers today. We waited for an hour to get a space. It took us a lot of time to reach the hawan kund,” Sunil Bhat, a devotee, said.

Meanwhile, a large number of Kashmiri Pandit community members gathered in Kashmir for the annual Kheer Bhawani Mela, held in the shadow of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack and heightened border tensions.

The revered temple of Ragnya Devi, nestled in the shade of mighty chinar trees in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, was decked up for festivities with thousands of devotees from across the country offering prayers on the occasion of ‘Zyeth Atham’, also known as ‘Jyeshtha Ashtami’.

A multi-layer security ring was thrown around the temple complex, situated around 25 km north-east of Srinagar, and along the routes for the Mela in the Valley, which is still reeling from the aftermath of the horrific Pahalgam attack in which 26 people, mostly tourists, were gunned down by terrorists. PTI AB RHL