GAIBANDHA, Oct 06, 2022 (BSS) - A 5-day long Sharadiya Durga Puja, the biggest religious festival of the Bangalee Hindu Community, ended in the district on Wednesday peacefully through the immersion of idols of deities at different water bodies.

According to Hindu belief, this year Goddess Durga along with her children made her return journey for Kailash, her husband's abode, on Dashami, the last day of the Durga Puja festival.

Earlier, the Goddess Durga appeared on the world from the heaven and her arrival was for all happiness and affluence and also the symbol of the destruction of evil powers.

On the Dashami day, members of Hindu Community exchanged greetings with each other saying 'Shuvo Bijoya. Later, hundreds of Hindu devotees bid a tearful farewell to the deities, which is called 'Visarjan'.

Before removing the idols of Durga and others gods and goddess from the altars for immersion the Hindu devotees irrespective of ages danced and sang kirton expressing their deep emotional pathos.

They offered arati to the Durga with billowing smokes from the Dhup pots seeking her divine blessing for them. Then, the idols of Goddess Durga were brought out from all the puja mandaps of the district at evening.

Thousands of devotees joined the colorful marches with music and dance as the idols were being carried on the trucks or shoulders to the nearby rivers, ponds, canals, and other water bodies for immersion.

Foolproof security measures had been taken by the law enforcing agencies including ansar, police, and Rab to avert any unpleasant incident during the immersion, said superintendent of police (SP) Muhammad Towhidul Islam.

A total of 608 puja mandaps were set up in all the seven upazilas of the district this year and a large number of law enforcers were deployed in and around the puja mandaps to maintain the law and order situation, said deputy commissioner Oliur Rahman.

The government also distributed a total of 304 tonnes of rice to the puja mandaps of the district to help the Hindu community celebrate the festival properly, the DC also said.

Initiatives were also taken to provide uninterrupted power supply to the puja mandaps at nights to enable the Hindu devotees in offering their prayers, puja, archana, kirtons, arati and other religious rituals, the DC added.

Engineer Monowar Hossain Chowdhury, MP, Umme Kuksum Smrity, MP and Barrister Shamim Haider Patwary, MP, visited the puja mandaps here separately during the puja festival period and exchanged their greetings with the devotees and the committee of the puja mandaps.

Retired principal Paresh Chandra Sarker, president of Bangladesh Puja Celebration Parishad, district unit, and its general secretary Dipok Kumar Pal thanked the government for taking the necessary measures for holding the Durga Puja in a peaceful way.