Bhubaneswar, March 26: The last screams of hundreds of goats were lost in the faint light at the Rakhya Kali temple, Rameswarpur, in the wee hours today.

Before that, revenue minister Manmohan Samal offered the first ceremonial sacrifice to propitiate Goddess Kali.

Samal, who represents Dhamnagar constituency in Bhadrak, where the ceremony took place, reached the temple last night for the sacrifice.

The ritual, coinciding with Chaitra Ekadashi, started around 3 am today and went on till 9 am. Though the exact number of goats killed was not available, sources said it would be more than 500.

A private television channel today telecast clippings of Samal at the temple.

The minister however, was quick to deny the charges of offering sacrifice. ?I visited the temple around 11.40 pm yesterday and was not present when the sacrifice took place,? he claimed. Sources, however, said Samal offered the sacrifice at 3.20 am today.

BJP state president Juel Oram tried to play down the incident, saying Samal?s supporters, and not the minister, could have offered the sacrifice.

Law minister Biswabhusan Harichandan said Orissa was yet to ban animal sacrifice in temples and so, Samal cannot be punished.

In response to a PIL on animal sacrifice, Orissa High Court in 2002 had ruled that animal sacrifice be stopped across the state.

?This is totally illegal. I wonder how the district administration allowed such a thing to happen,? said Jeeban Ballav Das, secretary of the Orissa chapter of People For Animals.

The organisation had earlier campaigned to put an end to animal sacrifice at Sulia in Bolangir district, Kodpada in Cuttack and Kishannagar in Jagatsinghpur.

Bhadrak district collector Rashmi Ranjan Patnaik said: ?We have made a universal appeal to stop animal sacrifice, but it is difficult to take stringent action as religious sentiments are involved.?

The administration has little control over the temple affairs as it is managed by a local trust, Patnaik added.