HC to hear plea for CBI probe into ‘missing’ ornaments case

Cuttack: The Orissa high court is scheduled to hear on Wednesday a PIL filed in 2018 seeking a CBI probe into the alleged disappearance of some gold ornaments of Puri Jagannath Temple.Senior BJP leader Samir Mohanty had filed the PIL on July 10, 2018 alleging that nearly 3.7 kg of gold ornaments received as gifts/donations by the temple had gone missing under mysterious circumstances.The PIL, against which the temple administration had filed a reply and the petitioner a rejoinder to it, was listed on Thursday. But on a prior request from senior advocate Pitambar Acharya, representing the petitioner, the two-judge bench of Chief Justice Subhasis Talapatra and Justice Savitri Ratho adjourned the hearing till August 16 (Wednesday).In his petition, Mohanty pointed out that 18.62 kg of gold and 116 kg of silver ornaments received as donation/gift by the temple were kept in the Nazir Khana instead of Ratna Bhandar (temple treasury). Later, about 14.56 kg of gold was kept in the SBI locker, while there is no record of the remaining 3.7 kg gold, the petition alleged.In reply to the PIL on April 29, 2019, the Puri Jagannath Temple administration, in a counter affidavit, claimed that the allegation was “baseless” as those had been “utilised”.But in a rejoinder to the counter affidavit on November 25, 2019, the petitioner questioned how the temple administration could utilise the gold ornaments received as donation/gift when the Jagannath Temple Foundation Committee had no meeting during the past 19 years.While Covid pandemic adversely affected the case hearing in 2020 and 2021, the issue has got a fresh lease of life following resumption of hearing. The HC is also expected to pass an order on August 22 in a separate PIL filed by Mohanty seeking the court’s direction for an inventory of the ornaments and jewellery in Ratna Bhandar and for taking up repair works inside it as per recommendations of the Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) technical expert committee.The PIL was last listed on August 7. While the ASI had filed an affidavit, no response has been received from the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA).
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