Cuttack, April 13: Orissa High Court today directed for shifting of the 522 British era silver bricks out of the Emar Mutt to the District Armoury of the reserve police in Puri.

The court issued the order while allowing the mutt’s interim managing trustee’s intervention plea and taking note of the Orissa government’s contention that the mutt building was in a dilapidated condition and not safe for keeping the seized bricks.

“While allowing the intervention petition the single judge bench of Justice M.M. Das directed for shifting of the 522 bricks to the Puri District Armoury,” interim managing trustee’s counsel Manoj Mishra told The Telegraph today. “The court also directed the police to submit a complete seizure list to the commissioner of endowment and deposit the Rs 2.54 lakh cash seized along with the silver bricks,” Mishra said.

Staking claim over the seized properties along with other properties in the mutt, trustee mahanta Indra Raman Ramanuja Das had claimed in his intervention petition that “the interest of mutt can only be protected by the present trust board after suspension of mahanta Rajgopal Ramanuja Dash”.

“The interim managing trustee will be affected if any order is passed by the high court without allowing him to be a party in the proceeding,” the petition contended.

Earlier the high court had, on March 3, imposed restrictions on removing of the 522 silver bricks. The court had imposed the restriction after mahanta Dash, hereditary trustee of the Emar Mutt, filed a petition claiming the silver bricks to be the “exclusive property” of the mutt and sought direction for inclusion of the slabs in the mutt’s property list.