7 months ago
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A magistrate’s tribunal astatine Ranni successful Pathanamthitta territory connected Friday (October 17, 2025) remanded Unnikrishnan Potti, the prime accused successful the lawsuit concerning the misappropriation of gold-plated copper overlays enveloping the chromatic carvings and sculptures of the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple, to the custody of the High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) till October 30, 2025.
The magistrate examined the SIT’s petition for Mr. Potti’s complaint successful camera. The judicial serviceman reportedly gave Mr. Potti 10 minutes to confer with his defence counsel.
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The SIT filed a remand study with the court, detailing the contours of the case, the people of the investigation, and the request for Mr. Potti’s custody to further beforehand the highly delicate probe.
Officials said the High Court had ordered the squad to support the probe nether wraps to preclude a parallel nationalist proceedings by the media, which, the tribunal felt, could prejudice nationalist sentiment and impede the earthy people of justice. Hence, the SIT submitted the remand study successful a sealed screen to the magistrate.
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Officials privy to the SIT probe said the investigators volition apt escort Mr. Potti to Bengaluru and Hyderabad to reconstruct the meandering way the temple artefacts took to the restoration mill successful Chennai successful 2019.
The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) had contracted Mr. Potti, a backstage person, successful 2019 to person the gilded moulds deposited astatine the Chennai mill for restoration to their archetypal aureate sheen. (Industrialist Vijay Mallya had donated the gold-plated panels to the temple successful 1998.)
It took Mr. Potti’s aides 39 days to manus implicit the artefacts to the factory, triggering suspicion that the custodians mightiness person replicated the moulds and sold the archetypal casings to immoderate affluent collector for backstage worship.
En way to the factory, definite movie stars, businesspersons, and celebrities successful Karnataka, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu had allegedly chartered the spiritual objects for backstage worship astatine their homes, supposedly successful speech for sizeable currency and golden donations.
The SIT reportedly wanted to analyse the transactions, instrumentality statements from those who had custody of the artefacts, and unearth immoderate criminality. The High Court had ordered the SIT to clasp to relationship those who had monetised the Ayyappa religion for backstage profiteering.
It had besides directed the SIT to probe whether the suspects had secretly smelted the gilded coverings for the golden and aboriginal replicated the originals successful copper to screen up the alleged crime.
The SIT was besides reportedly poised to contented summons to astatine slightest 9 TDB officials, including serving and retired persons, named arsenic accused successful the case. It was examining wherefore immoderate TDB officials had certified the gilded coverings arsenic made of axenic copper earlier dispatch to Chennai for restoration work.
Meanwhile, the Nair Service Society (NSS) has suspended Murari Babu, an accused TDB official, from its superior membership. Mr. Babu is presently the vice-president of the NSS’s Perunna taluk union.
