SIT detains two persons of interest in the Sabarimala gold theft case for questioning

The Kerala High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) has reportedly detained two individuals allegedly linked to the Sabarimala gold theft case. 

According to officials, the SIT summoned them to the Kerala Police Crime Branch Office at Eenchakkal in Thiruvananthapuram for questioning early on Friday. 

According to initial reports, the SIT had not yet recorded their arrests. 

Officials said the persons of interest in SIT custody include a Bengaluru-based jeweller and the owner of a metalworks factory in Chennai.  The prime accused in the case, Unnikrishnan Potti, had contracted the firm to restore the gold-plated copper moulds covering the stone carvings at the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple to their original golden sheen.

The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) entrusted Mr. Potti, an insider close to the temple administration and its priestly orthodoxy, with the refurbishment in 2019. Some of the encasings, donated to the temple in 1998 by industrialist Vijay Mallya, had frayed and lost their original lustre, prompting the TDB to entrust the task to Mr. Potti, who had built a network of wealthy Ayyappa devotees in Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Chennai. 

The SIT had earlier questioned the jeweller on the suspicion that Mr. Potti had sold some of the “leftover” gold from the restoration process to the jeweller. Mr. Potti had on record sought the sanction of the TDB to donate a small portion of the “residual gold” as dowry for an economically underprivileged bride. 

In 2025, the TDB Vigilance found that the gilded encasings returned to the temple after restoration by Mr. Potti weighed significantly less, and the alloy contained less gold than the originals donated to the temple in 1998.