What is the Sabarimala gold ‘theft’ case? | Explained
The story so far: The Kerala High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Thursday (July 23, 2026) detained the former Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) president
The story so far: The Kerala High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Thursday (July 23, 2026) detained the former Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) president P.S. Prasanth for questioning in connection with what has come to be known as the Sabarimala gold ‘theft’ case. Mr. Prasanth’s arrest signals a consequential turn in the sensational case, which continues to rivet public attention and remains an animating factor in Kerala politics. He is the third TDB president nominated by the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) government and indicted by the SIT in the case. Earlier, the SIT had arrested A. Padmakumar, a senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] leader who has since been suspended from the party, and later, N. Vasu, an LDF fellow traveller designated as TDB president, raising questions about the administration of State-owned temples under the previous ruling dispensation. The other accused in the controversy include Unnikrishnan Potti, a former part-time aide to a former Sabarimala temple priest, who gained traction in the TDB owing to his good offices with the temple’s priestly orthodoxy. In some measure, Mr. Potti is the progenitor of the Sabarimala gold theft scandal. His off-the-cuff remark to television reporters that a gold-plated copper artefact he had donated to the temple had gone missing since 2019 triggered the High Court-ordered high-profile and largely undercover investigation. The TDB’s internal vigilance recovered the object from the house of Mr. Potti’s relative, sparking off the expansive Sabarimala gold 'theft’ investigation that spanned Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, and brought celebrity devotees, jewellers, and gold-plating units under its relatively vast scope. The investigation led to the arrest and incarceration of Kandararu Rajeevaru, the then Sabarimala temple Tantri (head priest).
As per the Sabarimala customs, the Tantri’s is the final word concerning religious matters, including those relating to the presiding deity. Several TDB officials were arrested and several more face legal jeopardy as the SIT probe nears the finishing line. How did the controversy begin? In 2019, the TDB entrusted Mr. Potti with the original gold cladding that covered the Dwarapalaka stone sculptures flanking the sanctum sanctorum and the gilded panels encasing the wooden door for refurbishment and repair at a private electroplating unit, Smart Creations, in Chennai. The temple artefacts were fashioned from more than 30 kg of high-grade gold bullion donated to the temple by liquor baron Vijay Mallya, now a fugitive, back in 1998. Potti returned the artefacts to the temple later the same year, after keeping them in his custody for private worship at the houses and business premises of wealthy Ayyappa devotees in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, including film stars and famous playback singers. Potti’s rather quirky claim that the panels he donated had gone missing from the temple prompted the High Court to order an audit by the TDB vigilance, which flagged that the panels returned to the temple after “repair and replating” at Smart Creations weighed considerably less. The unit told the High Court that the handlers of the artefacts had gleaned an estimated 4.5 kg of gold from the alloy using some in-house chemical process at the electroplating factory. The TDB Vigilance report opened a Pandora’s box of allegations, including official conspiracy to steal the Sabarimala temple property, which put the LDF government on the defensive and provided sensational grist to the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to assail the administration at the hustings in the run-up to the 2026 Kerala Assembly elections.
The BriefWire