Puri: A peon working at the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) in Puri was caught for allegedly stealing donation money from a Hundi (donation box) installed inside the temple during counting.

Around Rs 35,000 cash was seized from the STJA staff's possession after the theft came to fore from the CCTV footage recently.

Taking disciplinary action against the erring employee, the temple administration suspended him from his service.

According to reports, the employee was engaged in the counting of donation money at donation cell of the temple for a week. He stole the money during counting of the cash.

However, it is yet to be ascertained whether he had stolen money during his duty hours on other days in the temple.

Such incident took place due to non-deployment of permanent staff for the counting of money from donation boxes and lack of transparency in the counting, said a senior servitor of Srimandir.

"There have been frequent irregularities in conducting the rituals of deities, indiscipline in security and use of fake certificates in job and theft from Hundi etc. However, the temple administration has allegedly remained silence on such issues for years," said Hajuri Krushna Chandra Khuntia, a senior servitor.