Man unleashes wrath on trustees who 'framed' him for chariot's theft

Two years after a 330kg silver chariot was stolen from the Sambhavnath Jain temple in Borivli West the temple trustees continue to rath on each other for the crimeFormer temple secretary Mahendra Jain 54 spent nine months in jail after fellow trustees accused him of stealing the chariot Now that he is out on bail he has registered a countercomplaint against them in court resulting in a second FIR against nine trusteesHe told the court that he was framed by the nine in a conspiracy to grab control of the temple trust He presented documents audit reports and minutes from the temple trusts meetings to show that he was on sick leave at the time of the incident at which point the chariot was under the custody of the very trustees who had blamed him Based on this the court instructed the Borivli police to register a fresh case against the other trustees Harakchand Savla Shantilal Puria Prakash Shah Ashok Jain Chandrakant Doshi Chetan Shah Bharat Shah Snehal Shah and Paresh ShahThe silver chariot went missing from Sambhavnath Jain temple in Borivli West in 2016The chariot along with an Indra dhwaj was built in 199496 by a former trustee It weighed around 330 kg including the wooden portions According to Mahendra though there are no records on whether the metal used in the rath was silver or not As the chariot aged the trust decided to break it and build a new one The chariot was broken in the year 2014 at which time workers extracted 76 kg of metal from it The metal was kept in the temple godownIt wasnt meIn June 2016 Mahendra was admitted in hospital due to a stoke and remained on bed rest for the rest of the year He claimed that the chariot went missing in this period In the meantime without consulting anyone or conducting an election Shantilal Puria became the president of the temple and Ashok Jain and Harakchand Savla were appointed as secretary Everything happened in my absence these people are responsible and they framed me for the theft following which I had to spend nine months in the jail alleged MahendraTill December 2016 the metal remained in the custody of temple as mentioned in the minutes of the committee meeting Around 32 people had signed the minutesThe other sideHowever one of the accused Snehal said Mahendra has misguided the court with false documents 27 kg of silver was recovered by the Borivli police so if he was not the accused how did the cops find the silverSince his release Mahendra has created nuisance and threatened the temple trustees including me I have registered a complaint against him at the police station Today he is denying the chariot is made of silver but each and every audit report signed by him mentions silverFellow accused Harakchand Savla added The audit reports signed by Mahendra over the years mention the value and weight of the chariotCopspeakDuring our investigation we had recovered 27 kg of silver from Mahendra The other trustees wanted us to find more claiming the chariot weighed 330 kg but they failed to produce papers to prove this said one of the former investigating officers in the caseHe added After he got bail Mahendra complained against the trustees and the court issued and the order to register an FIR under the IPC An officer from Borivli police station confirmed that they registered a fresh FIR on November 4Catch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates