Curse defied for temple treasure

They entered the temple wearing traditional white robes amid heavy security and mindful of rumours of a curse said to have taken the lives of two men since the secret vaults were prised open last July.

Officials at the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple in the southern state of Kerala were, however, undaunted this week as they embarked upon a mammoth exercise to evaluate the huge haul of treasure that had been found within.

Five granite vaults deep beneath the temple in Kerala’s ancient capital, Trivandrum, were opened after an order from India’s Supreme Court, unearthing a trove of coins, gold artefacts, antiques, diamonds and rubies that some reports have claimed could be worth as much as 900 billion rupees (NZ $22.7B) – almost double India’s annual education budget. The estimates would make the temple one of the richest in the world.

In a process expected to take several months, investigators are using specialist technology to catalogue and date every item, each of which will be filmed, stamped with a bar code and valued. The treasures are believed to have been deposited over several hundred years by devotees of the Hindu deity Vishnu, to whom the temple is consecrated.

Some of the vaults had been sealed for up to 150 years, sparking claims of a curse that were fuelled when two of the petitioners who had fought a legal battle against the temple’s trustees to have the vaults opened died suddenly last year.

Descendants of the former Travancore royal family are custodians of the temple.