By India Today World Desk: An Indian chief priest of Singapore’s Hindu temple was sentenced to six years in jail on Tuesday for misappropriating over 2 million Singapore Dollars ($1.5 million) of jewellery repeatedly from a prominent temple, according to media reports.
Kandasamy Senapathi was appointed as a priest at Sri Mariamman Temple by the Hindu Endowments Board in the downtown Chinatown district from December 2013 until he resigned on March 30, 2020.
He was found guilty of criminal breach of trust by dishonest misappropriation and two charges of remitting criminal proceedings out of the country, with six other charges also considered during the conviction, according to the reports of Channel News Asia.
Senapathi, an Indian national, was caught during the Covid-19 pandemic which disturbed the regular audit timing and revealed the missing jewellery.
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In 2014, keys and combination numbers for the safe in the temple’s holy sanctum were handed to Senapathi, which contained 255 pieces of gold jewellery owned by the temple, with a book value of about SGD 1.1 million.
Senapathi started pawning pieces of jewellery in 2016, taking them to pawn shops and later redeeming them by using money he obtained from pawning other pieces of temple jewellery.
In 2016, Senapathi pawned 66 pieces of gold jewellery from the temple on 172 occasions, the report said.
He continued this practice between 2016 and 2020, redeeming all the jewellery and returning it to the temple before the audit was scheduled. Once the audit was completed, he would pawn the jewellery again to return the borrowed money.
Senapathi got SGD 2,328,760 from pawn shops between 2016 to 2020, of which he remitted about SGD 141,000 to India and deposited the remaining amount into his bank account.
In March 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Singapore, the audit was delayed due to the “circuit breaker” measures forbidding non-essential activity in Singapore.
Later during the June 2020 audit, Senapathi misled members of the temple finance team that he did not have the key to the safe and said he had likely forgotten the key in India while visiting family.
However, when the staff member insisted that the audit be done, Senapathi eventually confessed that he had taken the jewellery for pawning.
Later, all the jewellery was returned to the temple, and the temple suffered no loss, the prosecutor said.
A police report was filed against the temple priest by a member of the temple committee.
According to the prosecutor, Senapathi had resigned after the incident. A seven-year jail sentence was also demanded by the prosecutor for pointing to the high pawn value of the jewellery involved.
Senapathi, however, in his defence, said that he wanted to help a friend raise funds for cancer and to help schools and temples in India.
While pronouncing the verdict, the judge said he could not ignore that the case involved about SGD 2 million, a significant amount and higher than any previous similar cases.
In a statement following the hearing, the Hindu Endowments Board (HEB) said it had commissioned a gold audit after the incident at its four temples – Sri Mariamman, Sri Srinivasa Perumal, Sri Sivan and Sri Vairavimada Kaliamman.
The audit confirmed that all jewellery was adequately accounted for. An expert goldsmith also certified that the jewellery Senapathi had returned was authentic.
“HEB has further tightened its governance and internal controls to ensure its charitable assets remain protected,” the report quoted the board as saying.
(With inputs from PTI.)