A new claim has emerged for taking possession of a part of the huge wealth recovered from the cellars of the Sree Anantha  Padmanabha Swamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. A lawyer from Kanya Kumari district of Tamil Nadu claimed that the part of the wealth belonged to the Adikesava Perumal temple of Thiruvattar in Kanyakumari district.

A leading newspaper had reported that advocate Mr Radhakrishnan had claimed Adikesava Perumal of Thiruvattar was the prime deity of the Travancore kings before they shifted their capital to Thiruvananthapuram from Padmanabhapuram in Kanyakumari district.

Radhakrishnan says that the treasure from the Thurivattur temple might have been shifted and saved in the Thiruvananthapuram temple’s secret chambers for protecting it from invaders like the Dutch and the Arcot Nawab.

“The idol at the Thiruvananthapuram temple is 18-ft long while the idol at the Adikesava Perumal extends up to 22-ft, the longest statue of the Lord lying on a snake couch among the 108 Divya Desams, the holy sites of Vaishnavites”, he said.

He argues that the Travancore Kings would not have completely abandoned their prime deity Adikesava Perumal while shifting their capital and must have saved the wealth of that temple in the newly built temple of Lord Padmanabha Swamy in their new capital.

“There are no facilities for arranging vaults and secret chambers in the Adikesava Perumal temple of Thiruvattar because it is surrounded by water form three sides so they had saved the wealth in the Padmanabha Swamy temple,” he said.

However, the advocated failed to produce any written documents to support his claim.