Thiruvananthapuram: Fresh doubts have emerged over whether additional gold thefts may have occurred at Sabarimala under the guise of gold plating works, with suspicion now extending to plating carried out at key sub-temples.

The controversy has intensified following the emergence of an old Facebook post by Chennai-based firm Smart Creations, which claimed responsibility for gold plating works at the Kannimoola Ganapathy, Nagaraja and Malikappuram sub-temples of Sabarimala. The firm’s owner, Pankaj Bhandari, has since been named as an accused in the ongoing gold theft case, further fuelling concerns.

The gold plating at Sabarimala was carried out at Smart Creations in 2019 under the supervision of Unnikrishnan Potty. However, evidence now suggests that the company’s association with Sabarimala dates back much earlier, to 2009.

A key development is a Facebook post shared by Smart Creations on April 6, 2011, in which the firm claimed it was involved in gold plating works at Sabarimala. The post stated that the roofs of the Kannimoola Ganapathy temple and the Nagaraja and Malikappurathamma sub-temples at Sannidhanam had been gold-plated in 2009 and that the work was completed within a month.

This claim has raised serious questions, as official records show that in 1998, industrialist Vijay Mallya had funded gold plating at nine locations in Sabarimala, including the main shrine. These records indicate that the kalashams atop the Kannimoola Ganapathy and Nagaraja temples were among those gold-plated at the time.

Documentation further reveals that Mallya had gold-plated 1,154.930 grams of gold, approximately 144 sovereigns, across five kalashams during that exercise. If Smart Creations indeed undertook gold plating at the same temples in 2009, investigators are now questioning what happened to the original gold-plated kalashams.