A criminal probe into an alleged Rs 100 crore land grab at the Arulmigu Dhandayuthapani Swamy Mutt in Palani gathered pace this week, with detectives from Tamil Nadu's crime branch questioning more than half a dozen temple and revenue officials at their office in Dindigul on Friday.
How the alleged fraud unfolded
The land in question sits on Sannidhi Street at the foothills of Palani in Dindigul district and is valued at around Rs 100 crore. Investigators allege it was pushed through registration for a mere Rs 2 crore using forged documents, in open defiance of standing court orders, leaving a gap between its real worth and the sum on paper that first raised suspicion.
The complaint and the original case
The case traces back to a complaint filed by S Muruganandam, who heads the Palani Temple Lands Division. Acting on it, police at Palani Foothills booked five sections of law, including conspiracy and cheating, invoking the country's newer criminal statutes. Named in that FIR were Sub-Registrar Justin Manikandan, a man identified as Murugadas who allegedly posed as a member of a bogus trust, and three other individuals.
State hands the probe to CBCID
Given the scale of the alleged fraud, the Tamil Nadu government transferred the investigation to the CBCID. The agency registered its own FIR on Thursday and assigned more than two officers to build on the groundwork already laid by the local police.
Officials questioned in Dindigul
On Friday, District CBCID Superintendent Sajitha, who travelled from Madurai for the exercise, personally interviewed more than five people at the Dindigul CBCID office. Those questioned included Muruganandam himself, along with a Tahsildar and a Village Administrative Officer from the Revenue Department, both of whom would ordinarily be involved in verifying land records before any registration is cleared. More than five officials attached to the mutt's HR&CE administration were also brought in as part of the questioning.
Madras High Court voids the sale deed
Even before this round of questioning, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court had already weighed in on the dispute, ruling in favour of an appeal filed by the mutt. A Division Bench of Justices CV Karthikeyan and R Sakthivel struck down the disputed sale deed covering 1.35 acres of mutt land in Palani, declaring it null and void, and in doing so overturned an earlier Single Bench order that had directed the Sub-Registrar to go ahead and register the document if it was otherwise found to be in order.
Suspended Sub-Registrar seeks bail
Justin Manikandan Subramanian, the in-charge Sub-Registrar who carried out the original registration, has since been placed under suspension. Facing the prospect of arrest, he approached the High Court seeking anticipatory bail, arguing in his petition that he had simply acted in line with what the High Court itself had earlier ordered.
The mutt's case against the sale
In its appeal, the mutt argued that the Single Bench had erred on both the law and the facts, and should never have cleared the writ petition at the admission stage without hearing all the parties who needed to be heard. According to the institution's submissions, the entire process was engineered to bypass its oversight, since the underlying writ petition seeking registration of the property never named the mutt as a necessary party even though the land belonged to it. The sale deed itself, the mutt contended, had been drawn up as though the property was owned by a private trust when it never was, and the writ petition had effectively been cleared behind its back. It further argued that the Single Bench overlooked the fact that actual possession of the land rested with the Thakkar, and warned that letting such a flawed registration stand would only invite fresh disputes and complications.
A separate FIR and the land's long history
Palani Adivaram police have separately registered a case over the alleged fraudulent registration of the same 1.35-acre parcel in the names of two private individuals, acting on a complaint from one of the mutt's trustees. The temple administration maintains the land squarely belongs to the Dhandapani Swami mutt and has asked the Inspector General of Registration to cancel the sale deed altogether, alleging the transaction violated multiple existing court orders. The plot falls within Ward No. 3 of Palani town and corresponds to the erstwhile Survey Numbers 998 and 999. Temple records trace the land's ownership to a charitable settlement deed executed in 1888, which dedicated it solely to maintaining the mutt, funding its religious activities and serving devotees, explicitly ruling out its sale or transfer as private property.
