Sabarimala Gold Theft: Kerala Court Denies Bail To Former Devaswom Board Official Sankar Das

The Court of the Enquiry Commissioner and Special Judge, Kollam on Monday (March 23) denied bail to former Travancore Devaswom Board official K.P. Sankar Das, who is arrayed in the Sabarimala gold theft case.

A detailed order is awaited.

Dr. C.S. Mohit, Special Judge, dismissed the bail pleas of Das in the cases relating to misappropriation of gold from the door frames and the Dwarapalaka idols in the Sabarimala temple.

Das is arrayed as the 11th accused in the door frames case and as the 14th accused in the Dwarapalaka idols case. He was arrested in January 2026. The Kerala High Court had orally criticised the Special Investigation Team for not arresting him earlier.

He is accused of the offences under Sections 403 [Dishonest misappropriation of property], 406 [Criminal breach of trust], 409 [Criminal breach of trust by public servant], 466 [Forgery of record of Court or of public register] and 467 [Forgery of valuable security] r/w Section 34 [Common intention] of the Indian Penal Code along with the offence under Section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018 in the FIRs before the Crime Branch.

Das is accused of signing the order permitting the items to be taken out of the temple premises for gold plating wherein the items were wrongly described as copper plates instead of gold-cladded plates.

The other accused in the case including Unnikrishnan Potty, Murari Babu, A. Padmakumar, N. Vasu, K.S. Baiju, Smart Creations CEO Pankaj Bhandari, Jeweller Roddam Pandurangaiah Naga Govardhan, S. Jayasree, Kandararu Rajeevaru @ Rajeev Thantri, S. Sreekumar are already out on bail.

Case Nos: Crl.MP 205/2026 and 206/2026