Technical Teams Scramble to Recover Deleted CCTV from Badrinath Temple

The Badrinath donation controversy has taken a technical turn as specialists race against time to restore a deleted CCTV segment believed to hold the key to the case.

Sources close to the investigation disclosed that while a 45‑day video archive was initially claimed, only a truncated version covering the days up to July 2 and a subsequent two‑week window was actually handed over. The remaining 32 days of recordings, which should capture the alleged fund diversion, are nowhere to be found.

Because the installed surveillance system only retains fifteen days of footage in high quality, experts suspect that the missing segment may have been overwritten or intentionally erased. Data recovery firms have been called in to examine the hard drives, extract residual data, and reconstruct the lost visuals.

The State Investigation Team’s comprehensive 18‑page report, recently submitted to the chief, emphasizes the significance of the July 2 clip that appears to show the personal assistant of the temple committee chairman mishandling cash. Apart from this snippet, investigators received no further video evidence for the crucial period.

In response to the emerging scandal, the Badrinath‑Kedarnath Temple Committee suspended the assistant, Pramod Nautiyal, on July 7 and filed a formal grievance. A four‑member oversight committee was also set up to ensure procedural fairness.

Authorities are now focusing on forensic examination of storage media, cross‑checking backup timestamps, and interviewing technical staff who managed the surveillance infrastructure. The success of these efforts will determine whether the missing video can be resurrected and presented in court.