6 months ago
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The High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the misappropriation of Sabarimala Ayyappa temple artefacts is reportedly inching person to fixing ineligible accountability for chartering the gold-plated copper panels to affluent worshippers for backstage veneration astatine their homes and concern premises.
Social media videos showing the main fishy Unnikrishnan Potti offerring puja to the gilded panels covering the doorway of the sanctum sanctorum connected the backstage premises of celebrities, notably histrion Jayaram, successful 2019 had gone viral aft the Vigilance helping of the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), somewhat belatedly, flagged the contented erstwhile the arguable lawsuit erupted successful the nationalist domain successful October 2025.
Likewise, the TDB Vigilance besides yielded evidence, including video footage of Mr. Potti offering puja to the gold-plated copper moulds encasing the Dwarapalaka figurines that flank the entranceway to the sanctum sanctorum astatine the homes of his affluent patrons successful Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai.
Potti’s offer
Mr. Potti had travel into possession of the gilded panels, donated by industrialist Vijay Mallya successful 1998, aft the TDB accepted his ‘dubious’ connection successful 2019 to reconstruct them for free.
Given the High Court’s bid forbidding the nationalist disclosure of accusation concerning the case, officials were noncommittal connected whether the SIT would service notices to Mr. Jayaram and others.
However, the officials noted that the High Court had frowned connected the usage of the TDB-owned artefacts, which they said autumn wrong the wide class of authorities property, for idiosyncratic gratification, and that specified misuse entailed important ineligible jeopardy.
Hence, they said the SIT needed to summon those connected with the offence for questioning to find the facts. With the court’s concurrence, the SIT could instrumentality a telephone connected naming them arsenic witnesses oregon enablers.
Doubts connected replication
Meanwhile, the SIT is besides reportedly investigating the possibility, flagged by the High Court, that the suspects, with the tacit connivance of their alleged enablers successful the TDB, had replicated the panels to merchantability the originals to affluent collectors, portion returning the replicas arsenic originals to the temple aft “restoration” astatine the metallic works mill successful Chennai.
The SIT had besides told the tribunal that TDB officials had wilfully miscategorised the gilded panels arsenic copper to facilitate the transgression and shield the suspects from imaginable ineligible peril.
Officials said the SIT was besides examining documents, including fiscal records confiscated from the location of Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] person and erstwhile TDB president A. Padmakumar, who was arrested and remanded successful judicial custody past Thursday. So far, the SIT has arrested six persons successful the case, including the erstwhile Devaswom Commissioner, N. Vasu.
