A General of Bengal Governor Suleiman Kirrani, named Kalachand Roy or Kala Pahad fell in love with the daughter of kirrani and got married on the condition that he converted to Islam. But repentance came who wanted to come back to Hinduism. For this he came to Puri to convert himself again to Hinduism-but the orthodox pandas of Puri Jagannath temple refused him to accept as Hindu In tune with the dictates of this new faith, he now believed that idol worship was a heathen activity, and went about destroying all Hindu idols in the region and embraced the new faith with the passion of the convert.
He invaded Orissa in 1568 and marched up to Puri. Kalaa Pahaad wanted to burn the idols of Lord Jagannath, Balabhadra and Goddess Subhadra, and in one of his attacks on the temple at Puri he did succeed in wrenching the idols from the temple. He threw the idols unceremoniously on the street and kicked them around a bit before carting them all the way to the banks of Hooghly and set fire to them. However, the ’brahmapinda’ or the core saligram stone (considered a sacred stone that is alive) had been removed from the idols beforehand by the priests who had anticipated the attack and had been hidden at Sonpur. When the priests of Lingaraj temple at Bhubaneswar apprehended his attack they filled the sanctum with husk. Kala Pahad tried his best to take it out, but in the end set fire to the dump. After he left, the priests put the fire out, but by then the sivalingam had cracked and been disfigured.
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