Uphill task ahead for temple probe panel

BHUBANESWAR: The justice Raghubir Das judicial commission may run into a few hurdles when it begins the probe into disappearance of the keys of Jagannath temple’s inner Ratna Bhandar.



Many feel that it will be difficult for the commission to retrieve information about the keys in 1985 when it was last opened to fetch some ornaments for Lord Balabhadra. Most of the key officials of the Puri district administration and Jagannath temple administration, assigned to look after the Ratna Bhandar 33 years ago, are no more.



Nobody since 1985 knew the whereabouts of the keys until Wednesday when Puri district collector Aravind Agarwal claimed to have traced a sealed envelope, containing duplicate set of keys of inner Ratna Bhandar, from his office record room. As per temple Act, the keys of the inner Ratna Bhandar should only be stored in the district treasury. District collector is the administrative custodian of the treasury.



“We wonder how the commission will dig out information from the past as almost all the officials, who were assigned to look after the Ratna Bhandar in 1985, have died. A few of them might have been alive, but they would be too old to recall the past developments,” said Prashant Panda, a servitor. The commission may get some information from Rabindra Mishra, a retired official of the temple, who claimed to have been part of a team that supervised opening of inner Ratna Bhandar in 1985.



Significantly, the commission is unlikely to get much information from the district administration as the collector Agarwal earlier told that no official record existed about the presence of the keys in district treasury after 1970. Strangely, the inventory of the Ratna Bhandar was last conducted in 1978. Besides emergence of ‘duplicate’ keys of the inner Ratna Bhandar would pose another challenge before the commission to crack the mystery. “While nobody in the temple or administration had heard of the presence of duplicate keys, how will the commission gather information as to how those landed in the collector’s record room? I don’t think the commission’s inquiry would achieve any result,” asked Shyama Mohapatra, another servitor.



As per the notification issued by the home department, justice Raghubir Das commission will complete the inquiry within three months. He will examine the sequence of events and circumstances leading to the unavailability of the keys of inner chamber of the treasury. The commission will also examine the role, conduct and accountability of individuals or authorities for the loss of the keys and suggest measures to avoid recurrence of such incident.