Sabarimala's former executive officer Sudheesh Kumar has reportedly been arrested in connection with the alleged disappearance of gold from the temple, taking the total number if arrests in the case to three.
The Special Investigating Team (SIT) probing the theft case arrested Kumar, who served as the executive officer of the hill shrine in 2019, after being questioned at the Crime Branch office in Thiruvananthapuram, news agency PTI quoted sources as saying.
Meanwhile, the Kerala opposition staged a walk-out on Saturday from the Assembly over the theft case. “The Devaswom board minister is also responsible; he has to resign. That is our demand. We are continuing that demand. We are agitating inside and outside the assembly,” Kerala Assembly Leader of Opposition and Congress leader VD Satheesan said.
Charges against Kumar
He has been accused of concealing that the Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols were gold-plated, instead recording them as copper sheets in the temple’s official documents. Earlier the police had arrested Potty and former administrative officer B Murari Babu, PTI reported.
{{/usCountry}}He has been accused of concealing that the Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols were gold-plated, instead recording them as copper sheets in the temple’s official documents. Earlier the police had arrested Potty and former administrative officer B Murari Babu, PTI reported.
{{/usCountry}}Kumar had reportedly been associated with Sabarimala since the 1990s and was aware that the sanctum sanctorum, including the Dwarapalaka idols, had been gold-clad during 1998–99.
However, when the Dwarapalaka plates were handed over to the prime accused, Unnikrishnan Potty, for gold plating in 2019, Kumar allegedly documented them as copper plates, enabling the accused to later remove the existing gold plating, an officer said.
Further course of action
Kumar will be produced before the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court later, officials said. Meanwhile, the SIT also interrogated Vasudevan, a close aide of Potty.
Investigators said Vasudevan had kept the additional gold-clad pedestal of the Dwarapalaka idols in his custody, which was later seized from the house of Potty’s relative in Thiruvananthapuram last month.
The SIT is investigating two related cases concerning the loss of gold from the Dwarapalaka idols and from the door frames of the Sreekovil (sanctum sanctorum), which were handed over to Potty for electroplating in 2019.
The theft case
The temple on the hill of Sabarimala, where the presiding deity is Lord Ayyappa, is situated within the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district, surrounded by 18 hills, and holds great significance among Hindus, particularly devotees of Ayyappa from the five South Indian states.
The row came to the fore in September after the Special Commissioner for Sabarimala R Jayakrishnan reported to the High Court that the gold-inlaid copper panels, covering the ‘dwarapalaka’ (door guardian) sculptures, were taken out of the temple premises and escorted to a private firm named Smart Creations in Chennai for renovation without taking permission from him or the Devaswom bench of the High Court.
Jayakrishnan reported that the development was alarming since the court’s permission was necessary for any such move on the temple assets. The decision was also a violation of the TDB sub-group manual, which stated that all repair works of that nature must be carried out within the temple premises itself.
The renovation of the gold-plated panels was said to be sponsored by Unnikrishnan Potty, a Bengaluru-based businessman and once a junior priest at Sabarimala. Potty was also the one who had volunteered to sponsor the renovation of the panels, including gold polishing and electro-plating, in 2019 too.
On Sept 17, the HC made the shocking revelation that the gold-plated panels and the two ‘peedams’ weighed only 38.25 kg while being returned from the Chennai-based firm in 2019 when originally it weighed 42.80 kg, a glaring reduction of over four kilograms and pointing to possible misappropriation of gold. It was also found that the gold-plated panels were recorded as mere ‘copper sheets’ in an official TDB document, another glaring lapse found by the High Court.
Around the same time, a Devaswom (Vigilance) wing found two pedestals, part of the temple’s assets, as part of searches conducted at the home of Potty’s sister days after Potty himself claimed that the pedestals were missing from the safe storage of the temple. These developments pointed to the role of Potty in the alleged theft of temple assets.