In a “beautiful” incident at the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya, a monkey entered the sanctum sanctorum on Tuesday evening and went near the Utsav idol of Lord Ram, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra said.

The temple trust shared the incident on microblogging site X and said that a monkey entered the sanctum sanctorum from the southern gate and went near the Utsav idol. Seeing this, the security personnel ran towards the monkey, worried that he might drop the statue to the ground.

However, the post read, “…as the policemen ran towards the monkey, the monkey calmly ran away towards the north gate. Since the gate was closed, he moved towards the east and, crossing the crowd, went out of the east gate without causing any trouble to anyone. Security personnel say that for us it is as if Hanuman ji himself has come to see Ramlala.

This comes a day after the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony of the grand Ayodhya temple in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other dignitaries including RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

More than five lakh devotees turned up when the gates of Ram temple were opened to the public for the first time.

A statement issued by the Yogi Adityanath-led government said that to control the crowd, the Ayodhya district magistrate had deployed magistrates at eight locations in the city.

Information Director Shishir said in a statement, “Today five lakh devotees had darshan of Ramlala.” The state government had said that the crowd appeared to be out of control at times but police personnel and officials immediately controlled the situation and made people queue up for darshan.

The doors opened to the public at 6 am and last entry was at 10 pm.

The UP CM also conducted an aerial survey after which he posted on Twitter, “Today conducted ground inspection of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi temple complex in Ayodhya Dham. On this occasion, necessary guidelines were also given to the concerned authorities to ensure easy and convenient darshan of Lord Shri Ram Lalla for the revered saints and devotees and to run all the necessary arrangements smoothly.

Adityanath also discussed with the temple trust about the measures necessary to manage the huge number of devotees visiting the temple.

(With PTI inputs)