THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) will examine whether the gold plating on Sabarimala temple’s door frames was replaced before reinstallation. The probe also raises questions about the authenticity of the seized gold.
In its report before the Kollam Vigilance Court, the SIT suggested that more gold may have been stolen from other temple artefacts. Final confirmation, however, awaits scientific analysis by the VSSC of the samples taken from the existing gold-plated sheets.
The probe team, in its report, told the court that it has so far been able to recover about 584 g of gold, which is only a part of the yellow metal that was stolen from Sabarimala. The SIT made the revelation before the court in its custody application of three accused.
‘Accused may have stolen more gold’
According to the SIT, the gold was extracted from the sheets wrapping the dwarapalaka idols, door frames and pillar frames. The door frames have seven plates, which were embossed with ‘dasavathara’ icons, zodiac symbols, and images of Siva and ‘Vyali’, while the ‘prabhamandala’ is attached to it.
The gold from these artefacts was extracted at the Chennai-based Smart Creations, owned by Pankaj Bhandari, using a chemical mixture. Prime accused Unnikrishnan Potti, Bhandari and Govardhan, owner of Ballari-based Roddam jewellery, were behind this act, the SIT stated. Bhandari took 109.243g of gold as a fee for the work.
The probe team recovered equivalent quantity of gold from Bhandari, and 474.96g of gold from Govardhan, which was equivalent to the quantity he had received from Smart Creations, the SIT report said. The probe team, however, said there was more gold in the sheets and that was stolen and used by the accused for personal purposes.
It needs to be probed further, the SIT said. The SIT has so far made 10 arrests, including that of former Konni MLA A Padmakumar, who was the former Travancore Devaswom Board president.