5 months ago
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The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), pursuing the money proceedings successful the Sabarimala golden theft case, conducted astonishment raids successful respective premises crossed Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu connected Tuesday (January 20, 2026).
The premises included the office of the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) successful Thiruvananthapuram and the residence of erstwhile TDB president and Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] person K Padmakumar successful Aranmula, Alappuzha.
ED officials, escorted by equipped paramilitary personnel, besides descended connected the location of the premier accused, Unnikrishnan Potti, astatine Pulimathu, Thiruvananthapuram; erstwhile TDB Commissioner and aboriginal president, N Vasu, astatine Pettah, Thiruvananthapuram; and the residence of erstwhile TDB enforcement serviceman Murari Babu astatine Perunna, Kottayam.
Officials said the ED simultaneously raided the residence and bureau of Pankaj Bhandari, proprietor of Smart Creations, a metallic works unit, astatine Ambattur successful Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and the backstage premises, including jeweller Govardhan’s shop, astatine Bellary successful Karnataka.
The ED raid comes successful the aftermath of the Enquiry Commissioner and Special Judge, Kollam, authorising the bureau successful aboriginal December to unfastened an probe against the suspects nether assorted provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The tribunal had overruled the State’s statement that a parallel ED enquiry could jeopardise the ongoing probe by the High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) and ordered the nationalist authoritative to manus implicit documents relating to the transgression to the Central agency.
The SIT has truthful acold arraigned 13 persons, including the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple’s main priest, Kantararu Rajeevaru, arsenic accused successful the cases. The charges against them see opening the doorway for Mr Potti and his alleged accomplices to misappropriate gold-plated moulds that encase the chromatic carvings, sculptures, and doorway panels of the temple’s sanctum sanctorum.
The SIT lawsuit was that the TDB had violated the instrumentality by entrusting Mr Potti, a backstage person, to reconstruct the gilded panels, donated to the temple by industrialist Vijay Mallya successful 1998, to their archetypal aureate sheen successful 2019. Moreover, it charged the TDB with misrepresenting the gilded panels arsenic made of axenic copper to connection ineligible screen to the accused.
The fraud came to airy successful 2025 aft an interior vigilance enquiry recovered that the golden contented successful the panels had diminished importantly erstwhile they were returned to the temple aft “refurbishment” astatine Smart Creations, owned by Mr Bhandari.
Subsequently, the SIT booked Karnataka jeweller Mr Govardhan for profiting from the transgression by receiving a information of the golden removed from the archetypal panels via a chemic process. The SIT was besides probing whether the accused had replicated the panels successful a cheaper copper alloy and sold the originals to affluent collectors.
The charges against the accused see violations of the Prevention of Corruption Act and assorted offences nether the Indian Penal Code, including forgery to misrepresent the gilded items arsenic made of axenic copper, conspiracy, cheating by impersonation, and theft, arsenic good arsenic scheduled offences nether the PMLA.
Officials said the astonishment inspections focused connected seizing documents, integer records, details of benami operations, currency, gold, and different valuables to verify whether the accused had laundered the allegedly illegally acquired wealth.
