Mandir new, manners old. Habitat new, habits old.

Even as grand designs are drawn up to create a new Kalighat, an age-old problem persists — devotees at the mercy of thugs posing as priests and pandas.

“I will have one word of caution for all those who visit Calcutta: do not visit the Kalighat temple,” cried Asish Agarwal, a first-time visitor to the city from Delhi.

And with some reason, too. Agarwal and his friends, Asish Sahi and Pritha K, were fleeced of Rs 3,500 on Sunday morning when they visited the temple a couple of hours before leaving town.

“We were told that this was one of the most important landmarks in Calcutta and so we reached the temple at round 11 am,” Agarwal narrated.

Unaware of a priest-panda ‘racket’ that rules the piety point, the three out-of-towners walked into the temple and ran into the Sunday morning crowd of devotees queuing up for darshan.

“A couple of the pandas approached us, and said we could visit the garbha griha for a fee of Rs 50,” said Sahi. “We had no idea what was in store for us as we got close to the deity.”

For around 15 minutes, the three were asked by the six priests to perform one ritual after another. “Then, someone who appeared to be the head priest took over and asked us to repeat the mantras — varying according to the gotra — chanted by him,” said Sahi.

“Suddenly, the priest slipped in a line in the mantra that meant that the three of us were pledging Rs 1,200 each as offering to the goddess,” he alleged.

Once “trapped” into taking the oath, there was no going back for the visitors from Delhi.

“They (the pandas) literally pounced on us and would not let us go without the money. They warned us that we could go back on our promise only at the risk of incurring the wrath of the goddess. When we said that we did not have enough money on us, all of them surrounded us and forced us to pay up whatever we had,” said Agarwal.

Jayanta Das, officer-in-charge of the Kalighat police station, expressed “surprise” over the incident.

“We have posted officers everywhere outside the premises…. But we will look into this incident,” Das said.

Malay Ghosh Dastidar, chairman of Sathi Brahman Sangathan, a non-government organisation looking into the welfare of the pandas, refused to believe that his men were responsible for the incident.

“There are a few pandas who work for the sevayat (priest). They are the ones who take visitors to them and rob them… I will probe this case and try to identify the guilty,” he asserted.