Sabarimala gold loss: SC to hear Pankaj Bhandari's plea against arrest on March 19

New Delhi, Feb 24 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would hear on March 19 a plea filed by the CEO of Chennai-based Smart Creations, challenging his arrest in the case of alleged misappropriation of gold from the Lord Ayyappa shrine.

The Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols of Sabarimala were taken to Smart Creations for gold plating.

Pankaj Bhandari, the CEO of Smart Creations, has moved the apex court challenging a February 13 order of the Kerala High Court, which dismissed his petition against his arrest. He has filed his plea in the top court through advocate Vivek Jain.

"List the special leave petition on March 19, 2026," a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma said.

Before the high court, Bhandari had claimed that his arrest was illegal as the mandatory requirements, including intimation of the arrest and communication of its grounds to him, were not complied with.

The prosecution had opposed his plea before the high court, claiming that mandatory requirements were complied with.

Rejecting the petitioner's contentions, the high court had said the only anomaly that could be seen from the proceedings adopted by the arresting officer was that he failed to produce Bhandari before the special vigilance court at Kollam in time.

The high court had said that there was a delay in producing him before the special court due to the time taken for medical examination and for travelling 71 kms from Thiruvananthapuram to Kollam. "I do not think that the same by itself is a reason to declare the arrest as illegal," the high court had said.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the alleged misappropriation of gold from the Dwarapalaka idols and the door frames of the Sreekovil (sanctum sanctorum) has alleged that Bhandari and Ballari-based jeweller Govardhan Roddam played a central role in a conspiracy to steal gold from artefacts of the Sabarimala temple.

The SIT had alleged that Bhandari and Roddam, along with the first accused Unnikrishnan Potty, planned the theft of gold that was entrusted to them for electroplating work. PTI ABA ABA NSD NSD