MP: Man donates Rs 17 lakh gold jewellery in temple to fulfill wife's last wish

A man from Jharkhand has donated gold jewellery worth Rs 17 lakh at the Mahakaleshwar temple in Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain district as per the last wish of his wife, a temple official said on Tuesday.

The woman, Rashmi Prabha, who died some time back, was a devotee of Lord Mahakaleshwar and used to regularly visit the temple.

After ailing for a long time, she had expressed a wish to offer her jewellery to God at the temple before her death, the temple's administrator, Ganesh Kumar Dhakad, said. On Saturday, her husband Sanjeev Kumar, a resident of Bokaro in Jharkhand, and his mother donated his wife's jewellery, including necklaces, bangles and earrings collectively weighing 310 gm and valued at about Rs 17 lakh, at the temple, the official said.

The Mahakaleshwar temple is one of the 12 'jyotirlingas' in the country.

Last week, the temple's management committee had informed that in the three-and-a-half-month post-lockdown period from June 28 to October 15 this year, it received a total of Rs 23.03 crore from entry tickets, sale of laddus, offerings in donation boxes, bookings for the Bhasma Aarati and through other means.

The temple reopened for devotees on June 28, after remaining shut for over two-and-a-half months due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.