The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was appointed by the Kerala High Court, on Friday arrested Unnikrishnan Potti, a Bengaluru-based businessman and the primary accused in the ongoing Sabarimala gold theft case. The arrest followed several hours of intense questioning. Potti will remain in SIT custody before being produced in court later the same day.
The arrest, which occurred on the fifth day of the court-supervised SIT investigation, is related to the alleged theft of gold plating from two specific areas of the temple’s sanctum: the wooden panels and the Dwarapalaka (door guardian) sculptures.
The Two Cases Under Probe
The SIT has been tasked with probing two separate, yet related, cases concerning the missing gold:
- The missing gold from the Dwarapalaka idols.
- The loss of gold from the Sreekovil (sanctum sanctorum) door frames.
The SIT is expected to seek further custody of Potti from the court to conduct detailed questioning regarding the discrepancies found in the gold’s weight.
The Alarming Discrepancy Explained
The issue came to public light after a report submitted to the High Court highlighted that the gold-plated copper sheets of the Dwarapalaka idols were recently sent to a Chennai-based firm for repairs and electroplating without obtaining the necessary permission from both the Special Commissioner (Sabarimala) and the court.
During a subsequent hearing, a High Court bench of Justices Raja Vijayaraghavan V and KV Jayakumar pointed out a critical finding from a similar repair process in 2019, where Potti was the sponsor.
- In 2019, when the copper plates covered in gold were removed from the Dwarapalaka idols for fresh gold plating, they weighed 42.8 kg.
- However, when these same plates were later handed over to the Chennai-based firm for the work, their weight had alarmingly dropped to 38.258 kg.
The court noted that this shortfall of 4.54 kg of gold was an “alarming discrepancy” that demanded a full and detailed inquiry. Furthermore, the bench questioned why the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), the body responsible for overseeing the temple, had failed to report this significant loss of weight at the time it occurred.