6 months ago
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The Kerala High Court-appointed peculiar probe squad (SIT) probing the Sabarimala gold-plated artefacts misappropriation lawsuit has obtained the constabulary custody of erstwhile Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) president and Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] person A. Padmakumar for further questioning.
The SIT had connected Wednesday (November 26, 2025) produced Mr. Padmakumar earlier the Inquiry Commissioner and Special Vigilance Judge, Kollam. The tribunal remanded Mr. Padmakumar successful SIT custody till Friday.
Mr. Padmakumar has been successful judicial remand astatine the District Sub Jail successful Thiruvananthapuram, pursuing his apprehension past week aft hours of questioning astatine the Kerala State Police Crime Branch bureau astatine Enchakkal successful Thiruvananthapuram. The SIT had earlier named Mr. Padmakumar arsenic the eighth accused successful the case.
It had indicted him chiefly for allegedly giving an undue pecuniary vantage to Unnikrishnan Potti, the main accused successful the case, by accepting, arsenic the past TDB president, the latter’s “dubious offer” successful 2019 to reconstruct the gold-plated copper panels covering the temple’s chromatic carvings and sculptures to their archetypal aureate sheen escaped of cost. (Industrialist Vijay Mallya had donated the panels to the temple successful 1998).
The SIT had besides accused Mr. Padmakumar of presiding implicit the “wilful miscategorisation” of the gilded panels arsenic made of axenic copper, allegedly opening the doorway to their suspected replication, smelting the alloy for gold, and chartering retired the artefacts to affluent devotees for backstage veneration astatine their homes and concern premises.
The SIT’s lawsuit was that the “false accounting” of the precious alloy’s metallic properties provided the suspects with a shield against imaginable ineligible jeopardy and opened the doorway for the pilferage.
Following Mr. Padmakumar’s arrest, the SIT raided his location astatine Aranmula and confiscated respective items, including slope statements, rubric deeds, different fiscal records and his passport.
Officials said the SIT seemed anxious to analyse the quality of Mr. Padmakumar’s narration with Mr. Potti and whether they had a mutually beneficial fiscal arrangement.
Furthermore, the SIT has already requested details regarding immoderate overseas question undertaken by Mr. Padmakumar.
Officials said the SIT was besides probing Mr. Padmakumar, on with different suspects successful the case, connected charges of theft, transgression misappropriation, breach of trust, and falsification of records concerning the crime.
The SIT was besides investigating whether Mr. Padmakumar had “altered” the TDB minutes to facilitate the transgression by unduly favouring Mr. Potti.
Mr. Potti, who worked arsenic an adjutant to an adjunct clergyman astatine the temple during the 2004-08 period, had subsequently cultivated a web of affluent donors and gained traction wrong the TDB and besides Sabarimala’s priestly orthodoxy.
The alleged transgression came to airy aft Mr. Potti told quality channels earlier that 2 gold-plated copper panels helium had “donated” to the temple successful 2019 had gone missing. The High Court ordered the TDB’s Vigilance helping to analyse the accusation. The interior Vigilance recovered the “missing” panels from Mr. Potti’s house, lifting the lid connected different felonies, including misappropriation of temple artefacts.
