The Travancore Devaswom Board’s Vigilance Wing has blown the lid off a major financial scandal at the Sabarimala temple, thereby booking 33 employees for the alleged illegal sale of thousands of packets of 'Adiya Sishtam' ghee. The probe, which has now reached the Kollam Vigilance Court, paints a grim picture of systematic misappropriation involving an Assistant Devaswom Commissioner and several temple priests.
According to the FIR, the total loss to the board has been pegged at ₹36.24 lakh. The fraud appears to have been two-pronged: a direct theft of sales revenue and the mysterious "disappearance" of physical stock. The most glaring gap involves over 22,000 packets of ghee that were supposed to be in the custody of special officers but vanished, resulting in a loss of ₹22.56 lakh.
The numbers revealed by the audit are staggering. During the Mandalam season, 89,300 packets were sent to the sales counters. After accounting for a few damaged items, the board should have collected over ₹89 lakh. Instead, by the time the temple closed on December 27, only ₹75.45 lakh had been remitted. Vigilance officers discovered that the missing ₹13.67 lakh — representing the sale of nearly 13,700 packets — was pocketed by a group of accused employees working in tandem.
The probe also exposed a major security lapse at the temple godowns. When the temple shut after the Mandala Pooja, over 28,000 packets were moved to storage. However, a surprise check on January 2 revealed that only about 6,000 packets were left. Three special officers — SR Santhosh Kumar, K Sainuraj, and MT Aneesh — who were responsible for the stock, have been named in the case.
Other specific instances of corruption have also surfaced. One employee, Sunil Kumar Potti, has been named as the 13th accused after it was discovered he sat on ₹68,200 in sales cash for over two weeks rather than handing it over to the board. With the temple administration now under intense scrutiny, the Vigilance Wing is looking into whether this " ghee syndicate" operated in previous seasons as well.
Also read: Sabarimala gold theft case: SIT arrests chief priest, 11th arrest
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