A magistrate’s court in Ranni, located in Pathanamthitta district, recently remanded Unnikrishnan Potti, the prime accused in the case concerning the misappropriation of gold-plated copper overlays from the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple, to the custody of the High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) until October 30, 2025.
During an in-camera session, the magistrate reviewed the SIT’s request for Potti’s custody, granting him ten minutes to consult with his defense counsel.
The SIT submitted a comprehensive remand report to the court, detailing the specifics of the case, the ongoing investigation, and the necessity for Potti’s continued custody to advance this highly sensitive probe. Officials indicated that the High Court had mandated the investigation remain confidential to prevent media influence from prejudicing public opinion and impeding the course of justice. Consequently, the remand report was presented to the magistrate in a sealed cover.
Investigators, according to officials familiar with the SIT probe, are expected to escort Mr. Potti to Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The objective is to reconstruct the route taken by the temple artefacts to a restoration factory in Chennai back in 2019.
The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) had previously contracted Potti, a private individual, in 2019 to deposit the gilded molds at the Chennai factory for restoration to their original golden luster. These gold-plated panels were initially a donation to the temple from industrialist Vijay Mallya in 1998.
A notable 39-day delay in delivering the artefacts to the factory raised suspicions among investigators. It is believed that during this period, custodians might have replicated the molds and potentially sold the original casings to wealthy collectors for private worship.
Further allegations suggest that en route to the factory, certain film stars, businesspersons, and celebrities across Karnataka, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu allegedly chartered these religious objects for private worship in their homes. These arrangements reportedly involved sizeable cash and gold donations.
The SIT is determined to scrutinize these transactions, collect statements from individuals who had custody of the artefacts, and uncover any criminal involvement. The High Court explicitly directed the SIT to hold accountable anyone found to have monetized the Ayyappa faith for personal gain. Additionally, the team was instructed to investigate whether suspects secretly melted the gilded coverings for their gold content, later replacing them with copper replicas to obscure the alleged crime.
The SIT is reportedly preparing to issue summons to at least nine TDB officials, both serving and retired, who have been named as accused in the case. A key aspect of their inquiry is why some TDB officials certified the gilded coverings as pure copper before they were dispatched for restoration.
In a related development, the Nair Service Society (NSS) has suspended Murari Babu, a TDB official implicated in the case, from his primary membership. Mr. Babu currently serves as the vice-president of the NSS’s Perunna taluk union.