Kanchi accountant sent to jail

Himalayan News Service

Chennai, January 5:

An accountant of the Kanchipuram monastery arrested in connection with the murder of a temple official has been sent to prison for 15 days.

A judicial magistrate in the temple town of Kanchipuram passed the order against the accountant, whose name was given out as Viswanathan. Police said he would be lodged in the Chennai Central Jail. Viswanathan was dramatically taken into custody yesterday night, just hours after he was questioned for the eighth time and asked to go home.

He is the latest among half a dozen Kanchipuram mutt, or monastery, officials arrested for complicity in the murder of A Sankararaman, a mutt devotee who had turned against Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi, accusing him of wrongdoing.

Viswanathan has been accused of fudging the accounts of the monastery so as to hide the payments allegedly made to the gang that killed Sankararaman.