ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA, July 7, 2016 (The Hindu): While the free fall of statues from various towers in the Srikalahastheeswara temple over the last few months, though brushed aside as sporadic instances, continues unabated, a similar incident witnessed in the Pallikondeswara Swamy temple in Surutupalle village of Nagalapuram mandal triggered further panic. The latest incident was attributed to heavy rains and lightning that struck the tower last night.
The year 2010 is unforgettable in the history of Srikalahasti, as the Raja Gopuram built on the banks of Swarnamukhi river by the Vijayanagara emperor Sri Krishna Devaraya crashed, triggering alarm among the devout across the world. Even three days back, a huge portion of a statue crashed from the Bikshala Gopuram in Srikalahasti.
According to temple accounts, devotees from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, who form a huge percentage of visitors here, stopped visiting the temple for the next two months, either assuming that the temple itself had crashed or treating it as bad omen. Even as the incident started fading from people’s memory and the tower is being re-built now, there is palpable apprehension over the frequent fall of statues from other gopurams.