Probe Report On Missing Key Of Puri Jagannath Temple Ratna Bhandar To Be Made Public: Odisha Govt Tells HC

Cuttack: The state government on Wednesday informed the Orissa High Court that Justice Raghubir Das Commission of Enquiry report on the missing keys of the Ratna Bhandar of Puri Jagannath Temple will be made public.

During hearing of a petition on the matter, the state government informed the High Court that the report on the missing keys of the inner chamber of Ratna Bhandar would be presented in the next meeting of the Cabinet.

The Court has fixed next hearing of the PIL after three weeks.

The state government had earlier sought more time to file an affidavit in response to the PIL, which was filed by a Puri-based resident in 2023.

The petitioner had sought the High Court’s intervention claiming that the state government had “failed” in making the enquiry commission report public.

The Justice Raghubir Das Commission of Enquiry was set by the state government on June 6, 2018, to inquire into the circumstances in which the keys of Lord Jagannath’s treasury called ‘Ratna Bhandar’ in Puri temple went missing.

Justice Das submitted his report to the Odisha government on November 29, 2018, but the state government was yet to table the report on the floor of the Assembly.

The state government reportedly spent around Rs 23 lakh for the Commission of Enquiry, the petitioner claimed in his petition stating that the people of the state are kept in the dark about the findings of the Commission of Enquiry report.

In its preliminary hearing, the High Court in April last year had asked the state government to file its counter in an affidavit within two months about the current status of the enquiry report.