Serious findings against Padma Kumar in remand report; changed documents without anyone’s knowledge, initiated gold theft

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There are serious findings in the remand report against former devaswom board president A Padma Kumar, arrested in the gold theft case in Sabarimala. The report says Padma Kumar initiated the gold theft, helped Unnikrishnan Potty to steal the gold, failed to perform his duties and that he tampered the minutes of the board meeting.

The minutes of the meeting convened on March 19, 2019 were tampered with. The board met to approve the restoration of the gold-plated plates that were taken for gold plating. The board's note stated that the plates were gold-plated brass. After cutting this, he in his own handwriting wrote ‘copper’. The investigation team said the other board members were not aware of this. After making changes, as president he signed to take them without board's permission. The investigation team's report also says that this paved the way for Unnikrishnan to steal the gold.

The report says Padma Kumar clearly knows that Vijay Mallya gave gold-plated copper plates in 1998. He is aware of the condition in the manual that Sabarimala's artifacts should not be taken out, and that he violated that by giving permission to Unnikrishnan Potty to take them out.