Bangladesh: Amid Beefed Up Security, Hindus Celebrate Durga Puja Across The Country

Hindu community people in Bangladesh capital Dhaka on Sunday (6 October) amassed at a temple to have blessings from a girl adorned as the living embodiment of their goddess Durga.

During the five-day Durga Puja festival, the Hindu Goddess Durga is worshipped in her different forms and one of those is Kumari, the virgin form of the deity.

This year's Durga festival that started on Friday (4 October) peaked on the occasion of Kumari Puja (the ritual of celebrating young girls as the mother goddess) on Sunday with thousands of devotees coming out to enjoy the grand occasion at Dhaka's largest Ramkrishna temple, the Xinhau news agency reported.

Hindu scripture allows girls aged between one year old and sixteen to be a model of the goddess Durga during Mohashtami, the third day of the five-day Durga Puja festival of the Bangalee Hindu community.

Puja pavilions and the approach roads to these venues in and around the city were illuminated with lights. The thematic designs and dazzling lighting of the mandaps (festival pavilions) also attract some Muslims who join their Hindu friends.

Bangladeshi President Abdul Hamid visited a couple of Durga Puja pavilions in Dhaka on Friday (5 October).

This year the Durga Puja is being celebrated at about 32,000 pavilions in Bangladesh including 237 in Dhaka.

Security arrangements across Bangladesh have been beefed up for the peaceful celebrations of the festival of Hindus, which will end on 8 October.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)