advertisement
A 19-year-old spectator was gored to death by a bull during Avaniyapuram jallikattu, Tamil Nadu's traditional bull-taming sport in Madurai district, which was held amid COVID-19 restrictions on Friday, 14 January. The accident took place near the bull collection point, and the deceased was identified as T Balamurugan of Avaniyapuram.
A bull that exited from the arena hit Balamurugan, who was standing near the collection point, with its horns, and the youth was seriously injured.
The Avaniyapuram jallikattu, which went on for seven rounds, commenced at around 7.30 am on Friday, and was flagged off by State Minister for Commercial Taxes P Moorthy and State Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan, in the presence of Madurai district collector S Aneesh Sekhar.
Taming 24 bulls, one Karthik won the first prize, followed by Murugan (19 bulls) and Bharathkumar (12 bulls).
The Avaniyapuram jallikattu signals the commencement of jallikattu competitions during the Pongal (harvest) festival in the district. The district would witness the traditional sport at Palamedu on Saturday and culminate with the one at Alanganallur on 17 January.
While Alanganallur jallikattu, a world famous one, is usually held on January 16, it is being held on Monday this year, owing to the weekend curfew. Though the events are held in other parts of Tamil Nadu, these three successive Jallikattu events in Madurai are major attractions every year.
As per the government guidelines, it was permitted to conduct Jallikattu, manjuvirattu (roughly translates into ‘bull chasing’) and vadamaadu (a different type of Jallikattu) events with participants not exceeding 300 persons, while a maximum of 150 participants are allowed in ‘erudhu viduthal’ event.
All the participants, bull owners, audience, program coordinators and department officials must possess a vaccination certificate that shows that they have got two doses, as well as a negative RT-PCR result in the past 48 hours before the event.
(This was first published on The News Minute and has been republished with permission.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)