Complaint filed against food delivery company for online sale of Puri temple's 'mahaprasad'

Bhubaneswar: The Jagannath temple administration in Odisha's Puri has lodged a complaint against an online food delivery aggregator for "unauthorised sale" of 'mahaprasad' of the deity, an official said on Thursday.

The leading online food delivery service provider has claimed to have been selling the ‘mahaprasad’ of Lord Jagannath and used the picture of a 12th-century shrine to mislead the people, Jagannath temple administrator (security) Hemant Kumar Padhi said.

"We have filed a complaint against the food aggregator before the cyber police station on Wednesday,” he said.

Puri SP Prateek Singh said the cyber police station is investigating the case, and the online food delivery aggregator has been asked to remove the promotional content for online sale of ‘mahaprasad’ of Lord Jagannath from its mobile application.

Earlier, the state government had rejected proposals made by some organisations for the sale of Puri Jagannath temple’s 'mahaprasad' on online platforms.

“Though it was a good idea to provide the 'prasad' to devotees worldwide, the government and the SJTA rejected such proposals to preserve the sanctity of the 'prasad'," Odisha Law Minister Prithviraj Harichandan had stated two months ago.

Neither the state has any such proposal, nor will it promote anyone to sell 'mahaprasad' online, he had stated.