A suspended staffer in the office of the Badrinath-Kedarnath Temple Committee chairperson has been arrested in connection with the alleged theft of donations from the Badrinath shrine, PTI quoted the police as saying on Monday.

Pramod Nautiyal, who served as a personal assistant in the chairperson’s office, was arrested on Sunday night from his home in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun, according to the news agency.

He was taken to Badrinath for questioning and is expected to be produced before a court on Monday, said Chamoli Senior Superintendent of Police Surjit Singh Panwar.

On July 7, the Uttarakhand Police registered a first information report against Nautiyal under charges of alleged theft by a clerk or servant and aggravated criminal breach of trust of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

The temple committee had served a show-cause notice to him on July 3 after the alleged irregularities came to light. Following this, a four-member inquiry panel conducted a preliminary investigation.

The investigation found that the counting of offerings made in the temple’s donation plate on July 2 “established that temple funds were illegally removed from the donation counting centre between 9 am and 9.30 am”.

The temple committee had suspended Nautiyal and filed a complaint accusing him of unlawfully taking the donation money for “personal gains”.

Nautiyal was also directed not to leave the temple committee’s headquarters without approval from the authorities.

Hemant Dwivedi, the trust’s chairman, had said that “the suspended man has been an employee during the term of three former chairpersons”.

Dwivedi added that the action “was taken so that no tampering can be done during the investigation”, adding that the probe aims to “ascertain the level of misappropriation in the counting centre”.

Following the developments, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had directed the formation of a three-member “high-level committee” to probe the allegations.

The committee has been directed to submit its report to the state government within 15 days.

The developments came days after allegations that donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya had been embezzled.

Edited by Sara Varghese.