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JAMMU, INDIA, November 25, 2002 : The attack on the historic Raghunath Temple, which claimed many lives and left dozens others wounded, was for Jai Gopal Shastri, a pujari of this temple, an unforgettable experience. Shastri, who is lying in the disaster ward of the Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu, believes that it is his devotion that prompted God to save many lives during the attack on the temple. “It was a gruesome attack,” he recalls. He says he was sitting in his room located in the heart of the temple with his colleague, Jagan Nath Shastri, along with about six pilgrims at 7 p.m. when they heard a big bang. “We had no apprehensions of what exactly was happening,” he said. However, he recalls that the moment they heard another big bang they grew suspicious. “I told the pilgrims that the blast had occurred right in the premises of the temple and we were about to close it (door) when another grenade landed near the gate, thus wounding me,” he said. I asked the pilgrims and my colleague (who is also one of the injured) not to open the gate at any cost and to remain silent. He said that immediately after the blast, silence gripped our room and it appeared that the terrorist was taking shelter right in front of our gate. “We heard the movement of his shoes and the noise of his rifle as he was loading it. He was also holding a bag, probably filled with more grenades,” he added. The terrorist was knocking at our door repeatedly, asking us to open the door while firing indiscriminately. Jai Gopal says that it is written in the Gita that whenever the end of any creature comes, he loses his power of thinking. “This was what exactly happened to me, and it was God which saved us. The militant could have easily sneaked inside our room by blasting our gate and he could had saved himself. All of us were gripped by fear, yet we could not stop ourselves from remembering our God. It is this prayer that saved us,” he believes.

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