THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Journalist Saritha Balan said that the protesters at Sabarimala would have killed her if there was no police there. Women journalists were heckled, their vehicles smashed and young female Ayyappa devotees turned back as hordes of Hindu right activists besieged the road leading to the Sabarimala temple whose gates open for women of menstrual age Wednesday evening for the first time after the Supreme Court's verdict.

"These protesters are not devotees, they are terrorists. Noone else can do such things. They asked me to deboard from the bus, and I immediately got down. Why did they attack me even then? I was wearing jeans and kurtha, so that I look like a media person. They did not even let me show my ID card. If they had plans to attack us, then they should have instructed that women journalists should not come. We did not go to a place that was banned by them", said Saritha Balan