5 months ago
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The Kerala High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) has reportedly detained 2 individuals allegedly linked to the Sabarimala golden theft case.
According to officials, the SIT summoned them to the Kerala Police Crime Branch Office astatine Eenchakkal successful Thiruvananthapuram for questioning aboriginal connected Friday.
According to archetypal reports, the SIT had not yet recorded their arrests.
Officials said the persons of involvement successful SIT custody see a Bengaluru-based jeweller and the proprietor of a metalworks mill successful Chennai. The premier accused successful the case, Unnikrishnan Potti, had contracted the steadfast to reconstruct the gold-plated copper moulds covering the chromatic carvings astatine the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple to their archetypal aureate sheen.
The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) entrusted Mr. Potti, an insider adjacent to the temple medication and its priestly orthodoxy, with the refurbishment successful 2019. Some of the encasings, donated to the temple successful 1998 by industrialist Vijay Mallya, had frayed and mislaid their archetypal lustre, prompting the TDB to entrust the task to Mr. Potti, who had built a web of affluent Ayyappa devotees successful Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Chennai.
The SIT had earlier questioned the jeweller connected the suspicion that Mr. Potti had sold immoderate of the “leftover” golden from the restoration process to the jeweller. Mr. Potti had connected grounds sought the authorisation of the TDB to donate a tiny information of the “residual gold” arsenic dowry for an economically underprivileged bride.
In 2025, the TDB Vigilance recovered that the gilded encasings returned to the temple aft restoration by Mr. Potti weighed importantly less, and the alloy contained little golden than the originals donated to the temple successful 1998.
