Udupi: Four held for siphoning off ornaments at Kollur temple

Udupi, Mar 1: The district police arrested four more persons in connection with the case related to the siphoning off gold ornaments, donated by the devotees to the Sri Mookambika Temple, here on Tuesday.

It had arrested bill collector B. Shivaram who used to work on counter number one of the temple near Kollur on February 24. With this the total number of arrests in the case has gone up to five.

The four accused are Gangadhar Hegde, computer operator at the temple; Prasad Achar, who was Shivaram's colleague and worked in the second shift; Nagaraj Sherugar, a suspended temple employee; and Ganesh Poojary, who was earlier a temple security guard and now a security guard of a hotel.

The police also recovered 2243.89 g of gold whose value is estimated around Rs. 70 lakh from banks and finance societies based on the information provided by the accused.

Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, K. Annamalai, Superintendent of Police, said that gold and silver ornaments donated by the devotees were being taken at counter number one of the temple and receipts issued to them by Shivaram.

The gold was then handed over to the Executive Officer of the temple for safe keeping. However, this system changed in July 2012, where the Executive Officer would return the gold to Shivaram for safekeeping in the treasury and cupboards of the temple. As per the police investigations so far, the temple had received 3172.2 g of gold ornaments between July 2012 and February 2016.

Of the 3172.20 g of gold ornaments, 2521.03 g of gold ornaments were missing. Based on the information provided by Shivaram and its investigation, the police recovered 2243.89 g of gold from 10 banks and cooperative societies in Kollur, Kundapur and Byndoor, where it had been pledged.

The lid off this entire episode was blown off after Shivaram went missing from here on February 15 as the keys of the cupboards were with him and his subsequent arrest.

The modus operandi was after collecting the gold, instead of keeping it in the cupboard or treasury, Shivaram through his accomplices used to pledge the gold ornaments with the banks and societies. “All the accused were in habit of using the money received after pledging for gambling, cricket betting and matka,” he said.

There had been no auditing of the gold and silver ornaments since July 2012. It is only recently, the auditing had been taken up. “It was prima facie wrong on the part of Executive Officers to have given the gold ornaments to keep in the treasury or cupboards,” he said. Besides this, some of the ornaments, which were pledged with banks and societies, had the symbol of the goddess or her name or symbols such as lotus, which meant that it was related in some way to goddess. “Yet it is surprising how banks and societies did not notice it,” he said.

The district police would submit a report to the Deputy Commissioner on Wednesday, who was most likely to order a departmental inquiry into the lapses.

“In addition to the five accused, we have rounded eight people for questioning and we believe there are 10 other people of interest in the case,” Mr. Annamalai added.