Silver bricks being taken out of Emar Mutt in Puri on Saturday. Picture by Sarat Patra

Puri, May 7: Police today shifted all the 522 silver bricks, each weighing between 35kg and 38kg, from Emar Mutt to the district armoury.

According to estimates, these silver bricks weigh around 18 tonnes in total. Police had unearthed these bricks on February 26 from the Emar Mutt premises.

All the bricks were found stacked in four big wooden chests in a dilapidated and closed room. Each brick is valued between Rs 18 lakh and Rs 20 lakh in the open market. The total cost of the 522 bricks would come around Rs 80 crore.

Puri superintendent of police Sanjay Kumar said: “The high court had issued a direction to shift all the silver bricks to a safer place. Today we shifted the bricks and will soon submit a compliance report to the court. Besides, the gold and silver ornaments of the mutt will also be shifted to the armoury. We will also open a bank account and deposit the money.”

Following a tip-off from Dhenkanal police on February 25, Puri police had raided the mutt the next day and found the silver bricks.

The matter came to light when Dhenkanal police had arrested two labourers — Barun Nayak (25) and Akshya Das (21) — on charges of stealing the silver bricks worth Rs 26 lakh and seized Rs 1 lakh cash from them. One-and-a-half months ago, they were in Puri working as labourers repairing Emar Mutt.

During interrogation, they spilled the beans and narrated how they had stumbled upon this wealth. “While I was working with a mason chipping the roof of a room, a slab suddenly fell and landed on a huge wooden box. The mason asked me to check what was there in the box underground. When we found the box containing the sliver bricks, he asked me not to speak to anyone on this. Later, he gave us two bricks and asked us to leave the place. Many other people had also taken the bricks,” Barun had said.

Later, police conducted a raid and found four boxes inside the room. These British-era silver bricks were around 100 to 150 years old.

Some of these bricks carried stamps of Sanghai, others of Britain and the remaining of the Calcutta mint.

Subsequently, police arrested the Mahant of the mutt and seven others. The government appointed a new management trustee who moved the high court seeking proper security for the silver bricks.

Acting on the petition, the high court had directed the government to shift the silver bricks.