The Sabarimala Ayyappa temple.

| Photo Credit: LEJU KAMAL

The Kerala High Court on Thursday directed the special investigation team (SIT) probing the alleged misappropriation of gold from the Sabarimala temple to submit its final report before the Vigilance Court, Kollam, on or before September 25.The directive came after the SIT informed the court that the final report in the case will be submitted before the Vigilance court on September 25.S. Sasidharan, head of the SIT, appeared before the court on the day and submitted that the probe was almost complete and that the team was hopeful of submitting the report before the trial court by September 25. The ‘stripping salt’ as well as the ‘cleaning salt’ involved in the two cases (pertaining to the alleged misappropriation of gold) had been forwarded to the National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML) for examination and the results were expected within two weeks.In a related case pertaining to the alleged misappropritation of gold from the Dwarapalaka idols of the temple that the SIT is probing, he submitted that since the investigation into the events in 2025 too had been clubbed with the case, the investigation in this case too was being proceeded with and that it could be concluded “without any further delay.”“Having perused the detailed report placed before us and the steps taken by the investigating agency thus far, we find that the investigation has proceeded substantially and that the remaining steps are required to be completed expeditiously so that the matter can be brought to its logical conclusion,” a Divison Bench of Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V. and Justice K V Jayakumar said.The court went on to direct the SIT to complete the investigation at the earliest and place the final report before the jurisdictional court without any further delay. The matter was posted for hearing on October 7.As per a progress report the SIT submitted in June 2026, Smart Creations, Chennai, had stripped the gold cladding from the temple artefacts using a special salt known as ‘stripping salt’ procured from Mumbai. In the course of the investigation, a salt sample was collected and forwarded to the NML, Jamshedpur, for analysis. The analysis is crucial to establishing the method adopted by Smart Creations for stripping gold from the artefacts, the SIT said. Published - September 03, 2026 08:13 pm IST