When the sub-court on Thursday directed the Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple executive officer to return the ‘pooja utensils’ taken out of the underground cellars of the temple, the victor lay cold in his old soot-stained house near the western end of the temple.

R. Padmanabhan, the person whose judicial activism eventually caused the Supreme Court to take stock of the riches of the Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple, died on Wednesday. Relatives said it was a heart attack. He was 50.

On Thursday, based on a counter petition filed by Padmanabhan, the sub-court dismissed an interim application filed by the executive officer seeking permission to take out ‘pooja utensils’ from the cellars. It also directed the trust to return the articles already taken out of the cellars. “We are not aware of it,” his elder sister told DC.

Battling sudden tears, she said, “He would have been happy to hear it.”
Padmanabhan, Pathusaar to all around, as he had been teaching accountancy to students, is a bachelor who lived in his two-room house with his mother and mentally-challenged elder brother.

His devotion to his namesake Lord Padmanabha defined him. For nearly 20 years, it was Padmanabhan who delivered the milk required for the Lord daily.

It was Padmanabhan who first questioned the move of the executive officer to open the underground cellars to take photographs in 2007.

It was this activism, nourished by former IPS officer T.P. Sundara Rajan, which led to the inventorying of the Lord’s riches.