The Kerala High Court has directed the Special Investigation Team probing the alleged Sabarimala gold scam to examine whether it attracts provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The court highlighted grave irregularities in the Travancore Devaswom Board's record-keeping. It also permitted a scientific probe into the gold loss from 2019.
On Wednesday, a Bench of Justices Raja Vijayaraghavan V and K V Jayakumar of the Kerala High Court reviewed the SIT's interim report in an in-camera proceeding. The court identified serious lapses in the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB)'s maintenance of registers and minutes related to the alleged missing gold from temple artefacts in 2019.
"The omission to record accurate and meaningful minutes is symptomatic of deeper systemic deficiencies within the institution, and, at its worst, may reflect a deliberate attempt to obscure or conceal irregularities," the Bench observed.
The SIT is handling two criminal cases stemming from the 2019 incident. The court noted that in 2025, the TDB took steps to create a false sense of urgency to transfer artefacts to sponsor Unnikrishnan Potty for gold covering. Specifically, a September 2025 decision to hand over repair works and gold plating of the Dwarapalaka idols was not recorded in the board's minutes book.
"This omission, in our considered view, is a matter of the utmost seriousness and warrants close scrutiny," the court stated. It suggested that officials feared exposure of 2019 irregularities through compliance with mandates.
A key discrepancy highlighted was the weight of the Dwarapalaka idols returned in 2019, which were over 4 kilograms lighter than originally. "If, as the records suggest, an entirely different set of Dwarapalakas was substituted under the guise of repair, it would amount not merely to a grave breach of fiduciary and statutory obligations, but to an act of criminal misappropriation of sacred temple property of profound cultural, artistic, and spiritual value," the Bench remarked.
The court added: "Such a course of conduct could not have been accomplished without the active connivance, knowledge, or deliberate inaction of officials of the Board."
The High Court has allowed the SIT to undertake a scientific investigation to ascertain the actual gold loss in 2019.