Singapore Priest: The 39-year-old Indian-origin head priest of Sri Mariamman, Singapore’s oldest Hindu temple, was arrested on Tuesday (May 30) for pledging the temple’s jewelery worth over Singapore $2 million (123.9 million). Sentenced to one year imprisonment. This information was received from a news of a local media of Singapore.
The name of the accused priest is Kandasamy Senapati. Kandasamy was employed by the Hindu Endowments Board as a priest at Sri Mariamman Temple in Chinatown district from December 2013. Pujari resigned on March 30, 2020.
Crime revealed during Kovid
Senapati pleaded guilty to two charges of fraud and two charges of sending the proceeds of crime out of the country, Singapore channel News Asia reported. Six other charges were taken into consideration while sentencing. The crime of the Indian civilian commander came to light in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Senapati started pledging jewelery in 2016. Later, using the money obtained from mortgaging other temple jewelery, the already mortgaged jewelery was redeemed.
172 times mortgaged 66 gold ornaments from the temple
Local news in Singapore said that in 2016 alone, Senapati had mortgaged 66 gold ornaments from the temple 172 times. He did similar acts several times between 2016 and 2020. Senapati received S$2,328,760 from pawnshops between 2016 and 2020, some of which he deposited in his bank account and sent about S$141,000 to India.
In March 2020, the Kovid-19 epidemic was at its peak in Singapore. At that time, the audit was delayed under the circuit breaker rule prohibiting non-essential activities in the country. However, during the audit in June 2020, Senapati told the temple’s financial team that he did not have the keys to the treasury and that he might have forgotten the keys at home during his trip to India. However, after the members insisted on the audit, Senapati confessed to his crime and admitted that he had pledged the jewellery.
