Sabarimala gold theft: Former officer, who gave false info in temple records, arrested

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the alleged theft of gold from the Sabarimala temple in Kerala has arrested a former senior official, taking the total number of arrests in the case to three.

 

Sudheesh Kumar, a former executive officer of the hill shrine, was arrested after hours-long interrogation at the Crime Branch office in Thiruvananthapuram. He will be produced before a local court in Ranni on Saturday.

 

Kumar is accused of giving false information in the temple records by listing the Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols as copper-platted, though they were actually gold-clad.

 

Having associated with the Sabarimala temple since the 1990s, Kumar was well aware that the sanctum sanctorum, including the Dwarapalaka idols, had been gold-clad during 1998-99, officials said.

 

An officer told PTI news agency that Kumar’s false documentation in 2019 enabled the prime accused, Unnikrishnan Potty, a Bengaluru-based businessman, to later remove the existing gold plating.

 

Potty, who sponsored the electroplating of the Dwarapalaka idol plates in 2019, has already been arrested in connection with the case. The SIT has also arrested former temple administrative officer B. Murari Babu.

 

The investigation team, constituted as per the Kerala High Court's direction, is probing two cases—one related to the missing gold from the gold-clad copper plates of the Dwarapalaka idols and the other from the door frames of the sreekovil.

 

Last week, the SIT had taken Potty to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for evidence collection. Te sleuths conducted searches at Potty's residence in Srirampura, Bengaluru, and at the Smart Creation office in Chennai, where the electroplating work was carried out in 2019.

India