Indian priest imprisoned in Singapore after pawning $1.5 million in temple jewellery

According to reports in the media, an Indian chief priest of a famous Hindu temple in Singapore was given a six-year prison term on Tuesday for routinely stealing jewellery valued at more than $1.5 million from the temple.

 

From December 2013 until his resignation on March 30, 2020, Kandasamy Senapathi served as a priest at Sri Mariamman Temple in the heart of Chinatown. His appointment was made by the Hindu Endowments Board.

 

According to sources from Channel News Asia, he was convicted of criminal breach of trust by dishonest misappropriation and two counts of remitting criminal proceedings outside of the country. Six more accusations were also taken into account during the conviction.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the scheduled audit timing and caused Senapathi, an Indian national, to become ill. This led to the finding of the missing jewellery.

 

Senapathi received the keys and combination to the safe in the holy sanctum of the temple in 2014; the safe had 255 pieces of gold jewellery that belonged to the temple and had a book value of roughly SGD 1.1 million.

 

In 2016, Senapathi began pawning jewels, taking it to pawn shops and later redeeming it with cash he earned by pawning other items of temple jewellery.

 

According to the findings, Senapathi pawned 66 items of gold jewellery from the temple on 172 times in 2016. Between 2016 and 2020, he continued this practise, redeeming all the jewellery and delivering it back to the temple ahead of schedule for the audit. He would pawn the jewellery once more after the audit was finished to pay back the loaned funds.

 

Between 2016 and 2020, Senapathi received SGD 2,328,760 from pawn shops. He sent approximately SGD 141,000 to India and put the remainder SGD 2,328,760 into his bank account.

 

The prosecutor claimed that after all the jewellery was eventually retrieved, the temple suffered no losses.

 

One of the temple committee members reported the temple priest to the police.

 

The audit was postponed because of the ‘circuit breaker’ procedures prohibiting non-essential operations in Singapore in March 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Singapore.

 

Senapathi later told the temple finance team during the June 2020 audit that he didn’t have the safe key and that he had probably misplaced it while visiting family in India.

 

Senapathi subsequently admitted that he had taken the valuables for pawning after the staff member persisted on conducting the audit.