In India, Mystery Over Gold In Temple
PURI, India — A group of men in loincloths assembled at a 12th- century temple on a hot April day in Puri, India, preparing to venture inside to a pitch-black vault where piles of gold and silver jewelry were stored under lock and key.
To enter Jagannath Temple, dedicated to an important Hindu deity, the group of 16 archaeologists, Hindu priests and government officials had to pass through metal detectors. Their skimpy loincloths were required as a security measure along with oxygen masks in case the vault, unopened for more than three decades, lacked breathable air.
Their instructions: Check the structural integrity of the vault and ignore the millions of dollars’ worth of antiquities stashed inside.
Locked away in hundreds of the country’s largest temples is a staggering amount of gold, weighing as much as four million kilos, the World Gold Council has estimated, worth roughly $160 billion. But despite their abundance of riches, the temples are often poorly managed. They can be a tantalizing target for thieves.
An hour after entering the temple in April, the men emerged, telling pilgrims that they had not needed to enter the locked vault, known as the Ratna Bhandar, because they had been able to peer inside through a metal gate.
A missing key, and suspicions of stolen treasures.
But two months later, another explanation surfaced: The men had not been able to go in because the keys to the vault were missing. A temple official was fired. Officials with the state government of Odisha, which includes Puri, called for an investigation. Soon after, they discovered that nearly four kilos of gold donated by visitors was also missing.
Suspicion quickly mounted that some of the antique jewelry in the vault had been pilfered by what a local journalist, Sandeep Sahu, called “a criminal nexus of temple officials and servitors” who had access to the keys.
The theft of riches from temples is common in India. In one of the largest such cases, a Manhattan art dealer, Subhash Kapoor, has been implicated in the theft of $100 million worth of rare antiquities from remote, unguarded temples across India.
After the furor this year over the loss of the key in Puri, temple caretakers said they had found a duplicate in the record room of the local magistrate’s office. Instead of quelling anger, the apparent discovery inspired more questions: When was the duplicate key made? Was it real? And where was the original?
Dibyasingha Deb, a member of Puri’s royal family and the chairman of the temple’s managing committee, said that accusations of mismanagement were unfair. He shifted blame to outsiders trying to “make us a laughingstock.”
Last month, officials from the Bharatiya Janata Party, an opposition party in Odisha, lodged a complaint with the police against state officials in charge of tracking temple valuables, citing their failure to inventory jewelry in the vault and questioning whether a duplicate key even existed.
Outside the temple, in a packed plaza where preparations were underway for a festival, anger was palpable. As the sun set, devotees climbed the steps for blessings. Priests squatted to light lamps. Nearby, the entrance to the vault was shrouded in darkness.
Sonalata Das, 67, lingered. Asked about the missing key, her face hardened.
“I prayed that God would completely finish off the person who has fooled around with the key for his wealth,” she said. “May he be destroyed.”