Kochi: The Kerala High Court’s order on the missing gold controversy at Lord Ayyappa Temple in Sabarimala reveals that the sponsor Unnikrishnan Potty had given a mere 3 gm of gold to the Chennai-based firm Smart Creations. The order also says that 474.9 gm of gold, which remained after the gold-plating work at the Chennai company, was handed over to Potty but has yet to be returned to the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), the custodian of the shrine.

According to the court, Potty reached Smart Creations in June 2019 with seven panels, including those covering the door frames of the sanctum sanctorum. The company initially said it lacked the expertise to extract the gold coating from the panels, but later agreed to do the work at Potty’s insistence. Using a chemical solution, the firm extracted the gold.

On June 10, another sponsor named Govardhan donated 186.587 gm of gold to coat these panels again. The firm used 184 gm of this gold, which was handed over to Potty, while the remaining gold was returned to Govardhan. The court order shows that not even a gram of gold extracted from the panels on the door frames was utilised by the Chennai firm for its work.

Potty approached Smart Creations again in August 2019 with 14 panels covering the ‘Dwarapalaka’ idols. Even though the firm expressed its unwillingness to carry out the work of gold extraction, citing a lack of technical expertise on this occasion, Potty also insisted on plating the panels with the gold taken from the door frames and from the panels covering the Dwarapalaka idols.

Finally agreeing to Potty’s demands, the firm took up the work and extracted 393.9 gm of gold from the panels covering the Dwarapalaka idols and 9.9 gm from other items. Earlier, Smart Creations had taken 409 gm from the door frames. Additionally, Potty gave 3 gm to the company, taking the total amount of gold received by it to 989 gm.

Of the 989 gm, Smart Creations used 404.8 gm for the gold-plating work and took 109.243 gm as its fee. An investigation revealed that the remaining 474.9 gm of gold were handed over to a person named Kalpesh, who was a representative of Potty. The court observed that no records existed to show that this gold was returned to the Devaswom Board. Considering all these facts, the court stated that sections related to serious crimes could be invoked concerning the incidents involving the panels.