{"id":113874,"date":"2021-04-28T15:54:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T22:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=113874"},"modified":"2021-04-28T15:54:08","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T22:54:08","slug":"hindu-temple-officials-arrested-in-sri-lanka-for-holding-festival-amid-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/04\/28\/hindu-temple-officials-arrested-in-sri-lanka-for-holding-festival-amid-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Hindu temple officials arrested in Sri Lanka for holding festival amid Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Hindustan Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>A huge crowd attended the festival at the Sri Kamakshi Amman Kovil temple in Tamil-dominated Jaffna without maintaining social distance or wearing face masks.PTI |\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Top officials of a Hindu temple in Sri Lanka have been arrested for holding a festival despite a ban on large gatherings amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, according to a media report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A huge crowd attended the festival at the Sri Kamakshi Amman Kovil temple in Tamil-dominated Jaffna without maintaining social distance or wearing face masks, the Colombo Gazette newspaper reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Police said that the Chairman and Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the temple have been arrested for holding the event despite a ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such large events have been banned by the Government until May 31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week, the government announced that tuition classes, parties and public gatherings have been banned until May 31st after Sri Lanka was placed on Alert Level 3 following the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Health officials have warned of a potential surge to follow the traditional new year festivals in mid-April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to new health guidelines, casinos, night clubs and beach parties have also been temporarily banned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Hindustan Times A huge crowd attended the festival at the Sri Kamakshi Amman Kovil temple in Tamil-dominated Jaffna without maintaining social distance or wearing face masks.PTI |\u00a0 Top officials of a Hindu temple in Sri Lanka have been arrested for holding a festival despite a ban on large gatherings amid a surge in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}