Sabarimala Gold Scam: Kerala Court Remands Prime Accused to Judicial Custody
Potty, who was taken into custody by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the Sabarimala gold scam earlier this month, will be sent to the Thiruvananthapuram sub-jail
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A court in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala on Thursday remanded Unnikrishnan Potty, the prime accused in the Sabarimala gold scam case, to judicial custody.
Potty, who was taken into custody by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the Sabarimala gold scam earlier this month, will be sent to the Thiruvananthapuram sub-jail.
Potty was produced in court on Thursday after his custody period expired. The SIT is likely to file a fresh plea to seek his custody for further questioning and evidence gathering. The prime accused was taken to Karnataka and TamilNadu by the SIT earlier for collecting evidence.
Potty was arrested from his residence in Pulimath in Thiruvananthapuram on October 16, and had served as an assistant to the Sabarimala priest between 2004 and 2008. He is being investigated in two cases connected with the gold scam.
According to SIT, Potty had detailed knowledge of temple operations and gold plating work undertaken at Sabarimala in 1998.
He procured around 2 kg of gold through breach of trust and cheating for personal financial gain. The probe revealed that Potty, who was hand in glove with Devaswom Board officials, misrepresented gold-plated door panels of the sanctum sanctorum as copper plates and removed them from the temple premises. These were transported to Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh before reaching Chennai, where the gold was extracted.
According to IT, 394 grams of stolen gold were used by Potty to cover idols, which were then displayed for monetary benefit against the temple rituals.
Earlier, the devaswom vigilance probe had found that in
August 2019, 14 items of gold-plated copper plates were handed over to Potty along with a gold certificate reflecting 394.9 grams.
The High Court, overseeing the probe, reviewed the preliminary report submitted by the SIT last week. The court further directed the SIT to conduct a comprehensive investigation, as significant damage and loss of gold plating on the Dwarapalakas were discovered in 2024.
The court expressed doubts about whether the Dwarapalakas returned to the temple were the same ones entrusted in 2019.
The High Court observed that all Devaswom Officers were responsible for failing to weigh and record the idols during refixation and suspected that the 2025 re-entrustment was intended to cover up the 2019 pilferage. The court referred to Potty as a person with "dubious antecedents" and held that the officials had willfully concealed the irregularities. The next hearing is scheduled for November 5.
Potty's close associate and former Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) administrative officer Murari Babu was remanded to the custody of SIT by the Ranni Court on October 28.
Murari Babu is the second accused in the gold scam case, was remanded in SIT custody for four days.
He was arrested on October 23.
While serving as the Administrative Officer, Babu allegedly listed the Sabarimala Temple's gold-clad Dwarapalaka plates as "copper plates" in official records before sending them for repair to Smart Creations in Chennai through the prime accused Unnikrishnan Potty.
