New Delhi: Days after a Hindu group staged demonstrations in which they reportedly made communally charged allegations over the desecration of a temple near Valanchery in Kerala, police arrested the man responsible on Friday and said he had done it to spark communal tension in the region.

A report by The Hindu quoted police as having said that the man, Ramakrishnan, had thrown human excreta at the Sreedharmasastha Temple and vandalised the Naga statues on the premises on the night of August 26.

Ramakrishnan is reportedly a close associate of the younger brother of Ayapunni, BJP’s local candidate for the panchayat election. The brother, Rajan, was taken in for questioning and released after police was convinced that Ramakrishnan had acted alone, reported The News Minute.

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Ramakrishnan has been arrested under sections 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage reli­gious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or reli­gious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code, reported Dool News.

The Malayali outlet also reported that shortly after the Hindu group, Hindu Aikya Vedi, attempted to incite communal unrest with their protest against the temple desecration, locals had taken out a march for peace in the region.

This temple, like the one in Sabarimala which came at the centre of a longstanding dispute and protests over the entry of women, is a shrine of the deity Ayyappa.