Former IPS Officer Exposes Sabarimala Corruption
A former IPS officer has revealed that the epicenter of the corruption and fraud that took place at Sabarimala was the Tantri (chief priest) and V. S. Jayakumar, the brother of former Devaswom Minister V. S. Sivakumar. This was disclosed by former Devaswom Chief Vigilance Officer V. Gopalakrishnan in an interview given to Kairali News. He said that during the UDF regime, huge amounts of money were stolen, including from the Sabarimala offering (kanikka) revenue, and that the Vigilance department had detected this.
“If you ‘greased the palms’ of V. S. Jayakumar and the Tantri, any official could carry out corruption at Sabarimala. Ninety percent of the shops that conducted business by taking auction rights at Sabarimala belonged to certain officials of the Devaswom Board. Even though there was evidence in the ‘vessel corruption case’ led by Jayakumar, some people in the then ruling party suppressed it.
During the UDF period, three daily-wage workers who were counting the offerings were caught while trying to smuggle 40 lakh rupees hidden in their undergarments. When daily offerings ranged from 85 lakh to one crore rupees, between 15 lakh and 25 lakh rupees would be siphoned off. Since cameras alone were not sufficient to monitor the counting of offerings, it was decided to deploy 50 police officers. Though a senior IPS officer strongly opposed this, Vigilance stood firm citing High Court intervention and the police were deployed. When Prayar Gopalakrishnan became Devaswom President, he was not even willing to speak to me, the Vigilance officer,” said V. Gopalakrishnan.
Vaji Vahanam cannot be transferred
Contrary to the 2012 Devaswom order that the Vaji Vahanam must remain Devaswom property, it cannot be transferred. According to the Devaswom Manual, any change to this order requires the permission of the Supreme Court. Smuggling the Vaji Vahanam was part of a conspiracy. The decision to remove even the flagstaff must have been taken after fixing a price to sell the Vaji Vahanam worth crores of rupees, V. Gopalakrishnan said.