Hours before the Sabarimala temple opened for the 41-day annual pilgrimage season today, 10 women from Andhra Pradesh were sent back from the hill shrine in Kerala. The state government on Friday said the shrine is "no place for activism" and activists hoping to make a statement by going on pilgrimage will not be given police protection. The Kerala government's non-committal stand about giving protection to women between the age of 10 and 50 years comes after Supreme Court on Thursday referred review petitions against its 2018 verdict to a seven-judge bench.
