SIT questioned Sabarimala tantris in gold theft case ahead of Mandala-Makaravilakku season

The Kerala High Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) probing the misappropriation of gold-plated panels from the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple has recorded the statements of two tantris (chief priests) of the temple.

Officials said the SIT had summoned Tantri Kandararu Rajeevaru and Tantri Kandararu Mohanaru to the Kerala State Crime Branch office at Enchakkal, Thiruvananthapuram, possibly ahead of the start of the Mandala-Makaravilakku season, during which custom mandated their presence at Sabarimala.

The key development, which surfaced in the public domain somewhat belatedly on Wednesday (November 26, 2025), signalled that the investigation had touched upon the Sabarimala temple’s priestly orthodoxy. 

Officials said the investigation also focussed on the main accused, Unnikrishnan Potti, and his tenure as an aide to an assistant priest at Sabarimala during the 2004-08 period. Subsequently, Mr Potti served as a priest at the Ayyappa Temple in Jalahalli, Bengaluru, Karnataka. 

They said the SIT’s interest appeared piqued after preliminary investigations revealed that the members of the tantri’s family also served as the chief priest of the Jalahalli Ayyappa Temple patronised by wealthy Ayyappa devotees in Bengaluru.

The SIT had also found that the members of the tantri’s family had performed private pujas at the houses and business premises of wealthy Ayyappa devotees in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai, allegedly at Mr. Potti’s behest. Officials said the SIT appeared keen to determine whether Mr. Potti shared a financially symbiotic relationship with the thantri family.

Moreover, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) had sought the token religious sanction of the tantris, as mandated by custom, to hand over the gold-plated copper moulds covering the temple’s stone carvings and sculptures to Mr Potti for restoration in 2019. 

(Industrialist Vijay Mallya had donated the pricey panels to the temple in 1998, and these had subsequently frayed and lost the original golden sheen.)

Officials said the chief priests reportedly claimed that they had no prior knowledge that the TDB had allowed Mr Potti to transport the gold-plated panels outside the temple precincts for restoration.

Moreover, the tantris reportedly stated to the SIT that they had confined themselves solely to the purely ritual act of seeking the presiding deity’s grace to dismantle and repair the temple property. 

Earlier, the SIT had accused the suspect TDB officials of dismantling the gold-plated copper moulds in the absence of official smiths and handing them over to a private person, Mr Potti, for repair, in violation of the Sabarimala Temple manual, and also, suspiciously, miscategorising the gilded panels as made of pure copper.

The SIT also found that Mr Potti kept the gilded artefacts in his private custody for a protracted period, an estimated 42 days, and chartered out these to wealthy devotees for private veneration at their homes and business premises. 

The High Court had also flagged suspicion that the TDB’s questionable decision had opened the door to the possible smelting of the pricey alloy for gold, or to replicating the artefacts to sell the originals to wealthy collectors in the country or abroad. 

Meanwhile, Tantri Kandararu Rajeevaru told reporters at Pathanamthitta on Wednesday that he had “honestly answered” SIT’s questions.