CM Naveen fears a backlash if jewellery is found missing from the Jagannath temple’s chamber whose keys were lost
The Mystery of Ratna Bh andar
by Sandeep Sahu in PuriW
HEN the juggernaut rolls
during the Rath Yatra festi-
val in Puri on July 4, a dis-
cordant note amid the revel-
ry would be the missing keys
to Lord Jagannath temple’s treasure
trove—the Ratna Bhandar. It would
be more than a year since the keys
went ‘missing ’, and no one knows if
some of the precious jewellery worth
crores of rupees have also disap-
peared. Nor does anyone know if the
keys marked ‘duplicate’ that myste-
riously surfaced at the record room
of the district collector’s office, nine
days after the keys were reported
missing on April 4, 2018, were actu-
ally the keys of the Ratna Bhandar.
In what is perhaps the only case of its
kind in the country, an embarrassed
state government had ordered a judi
cial inquiry on June 7, 2018, six days
after a leading Odia TV
news channel broke the
story of a heated discus
sion about the missing
keys at the meeting of
the temple management
committee on the same
day when the keys were
reported missing. As per
the minutes of the meet
ing revealed by the news
channel, Gajapati Dib y
asingh Deb, the ‘first servitor’ of the
temple, expressed his unhappiness
over the shoddy handling of the affair.
The inquiry commission headed by
Justice Raghubir Das, a retired judge of
the Orissa High Court, submitted its
324page final report to the government
on November 30, 2018, well before its
sixmonth deadline. And there the mat
ter has rested ever since. The report is
yet to be placed in the assembly and no
one knows what it contains or what act
ion has been taken on its recommenda
tions. “The inquiry report has been
submitted to the government, which will
decide on what action is to be taken,”
says Shree Jagannath Temple
Administration (SJTA) chief adminis
trator Pradipta Mohapatra, on being
asked about the report. But aren’t six
months enough for the government to
act on an issue that has left millions of
Lord Jagannath devotees fuming?
The absence of action has spawnedspeculation that the bulk of the jewel
lery inside the temple had been
pilfered over the years by an unholy
nexus of temple officials and servitors.
And such speculation has a basis—the
last time the Ratna Bhandar was
inspected and an inventory made was
way back in 1978, even though the
Jagannath Temple Act, 1960, stipulates
the opening of the treasure trove every
six months and the preparation of an
inventory every three years.
Moreover, the temple administration
has made no attempt to find whether
the ‘duplicate’ keys can open the Ratna
Bhandar gates, strengthening the suspi
cion of pilferage. In any case, nothing
stops it from breaking open the locks
and taking stock of the wealth. The
whole thing would have remained under
wraps had it not been for a high court
order asking the temple administration
to take stock of the physical condition of
the storehouse. On April 4 last year,
armed with the order, a
17 member team com
prising officials of the
temple administration,
the state government
and the Archeological
Survey of India, led by
the then SJTA chief adm
inistrator Pradeep Jena,
had gone with a bunch of
keys, but mysteriously
returned without enter
ing the room. “The team did not feel the
need to go in since we were able to assess
the condition of the structure from
outside with the help of searchlights,”
Jena had told waiting journalists after
the team came out. The explanation
convinced no one.
“Why didn’t the team go in?” asks
Srikumar Shukla, a Puribased lawyer
and journalist. “After all, it was on the
high court’s order that they were to
enter the Ratna Bhandar. Not sure if
the keys they were carrying would
open the locks, they had also carried
gas cutters to break them open. It does
appear rather strange that the team
made no attempt to enter the premises
or even inform the high court about it.”
A year down the line, several questions
remain unanswered. Where did the
‘duplicate’ keys come from when retired
temple officials and Jagannath cult exp
erts aver that there was no provision for
any duplicate keys in the Temple Act?The temple
administration
has not tried to
see whether the
‘duplicate’ keys
can open the
chamber gates.YEAR OF THE MISSING
KEYS Lord Jagannath
Temple in Puri, Odisha
ABHISHEK K. SAXENA8 July 2019 OUTLOOK 17