SINGAPORE – The former chief priest at Sri Mariamman Temple, who received more than $2.3 million from pawning gold jewellery that was used to adorn statues of deities at the South Bridge Road temple, failed in his appeal for a lighter jail term.

Kandasamy Senapathi, 39, was sentenced to six years’ jail by a district judge in May, after he pleaded guilty to two charges of criminal breach of trust (CBT) and two charges of removing the benefits of his criminal activities from jurisdiction.

Six similar charges were taken into consideration during the Indian national’s sentencing.

On Tuesday, his lawyer, Mr Divanan Narkunan, argued before the High Court that the sentence imposed was manifestly excessive.

Mr Divanan argued that the district judge had erred by focusing on the misappropriated sum stated in the charges without considering that the money actually obtained by Kandasamy were merely a fraction of the total pawn proceeds.

The lawyer pointed to the “unique fact pattern” in Kandasamy’s scheme between 2016 and 2020, which involved him “rolling” the pieces of jewellery.

Kandasamy would pawn a piece of jewellery for cash and then return on another day to redeem the first piece of jewellery using a second piece of jewellery.

The lawyer argued that although Kandasamy received a total of $2.3 million, he had obtained only $141,054.90 as benefits as most of the pawn proceeds were used to redeem the jewellery and pay off the interest owed to the pawnshops.

But Justice Vincent Hoong disagreed.

The High Court judge pointed out that when Kandasamy pawned the pieces of jewellery, he received the proceeds as reflected in the charges. The amount represented the value of the items misappropriated.

“How the appellant chose to use the pawn proceeds subsequently is irrelevant to determining the sum misappropriated in each of the CBT charges,” he said.

The judge also noted that sums owed to the pawnshops were a result of Kandasamy’s unlawful acts.

“The appellant cannot now point to his use of a portion of the pawn proceeds to continue his offending conduct and avoid detection to argue that the sums misappropriated were lower. This is simply a disingenuous argument.”

Kandasamy was employed by the Hindu Endowments Board as a priest of the temple from Dec 20, 2013, and promoted to chief priest in July 2018. He was removed after the loss was discovered.

Since 2014, he was the only person with access to the keys and combination number code to the temple’s safe, which contained 225 pieces of gold jewellery.

Between 2016 and 2020, he pawned 66 distinct pieces of jewellery at various pawnshops on 172 occasions.

His activities went undetected as he was able to borrow enough money to redeem the pawned jewellery whenever he knew an audit was being scheduled.

Once the audit was completed, he would pawn the temple’s jewellery again to return the money borrowed.

Kandasamy deposited a portion of the money he received into his personal bank account and remitted $141,054.90 to India.

The offences came to light in July 2020, when a routine audit, which had been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was scheduled.

He initially tried to evade detection by telling a member of the temple’s finance team that he did not have the key to the safe as he had left it in India.

However, when he was told that the safe may have to be broken open for its contents to be audited, he confessed to pawning the temple’s jewellery.

All the pieces of jewellery he pawned have since been returned to the temple. However, the sum of $141,054.90 which was remitted was not recovered.