Indian temple row turns political as protests grow

New Delhi - Dozens of Hindu priests on Friday also joined protesters to block the women.

A senior leader of India's ruling party warned on Friday that protesters in Kerala would take the law into their hands if officials attempted to let women enter a hill temple at the centre of a raging controversy.
A political tinge for the controversy could help Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party gain ground in Kerala, where it has never made much headway, and won just one of 98 seats it contested in the last elections to the state assembly in 2016.
Protests against women entering the Hindu temple grew on Friday, with hundreds of hardliners blocking three women from entering the Sabarimala temple for a third day.
Dozens of Hindu priests on Friday also joined protesters to block the women. "We have decided to lock the temple and hand over the keys and leave. I stand with the devotees. I do not have any other option" said Kandararu Rajeevaru, the head priest.
The demonstrators were defying a Supreme Court verdict that overturned a decades-old ruling by a lower court denying entry to women of menstrual age.
"If the government is trying to implement its agenda in Sabarimala, we will prevent it, even by taking the law into our hands," said K. Surendran, the general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state.
"Sabarimala is not a place for anybody to tamper with."
Surendran accused the state's Communist Party government, which has tried to implement the verdict, of provoking devotees after police gave protection to some women who sought to reach the remote site.

• India